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HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 



LECTURES 



ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PREVAILING FORMS OE UNBELIEF, 

CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE NATURE AND 

CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 



BY 

REV. J. M. MANNING, D.D., 

PASTOR OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON, AND LECTURER ON THE 

RELATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY TO POPULAR INFIDELITY 

AT ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 






Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which 
is Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. iii. 11. 



BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK: 

LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 

1872. 






y 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 

By LEE AND SHEPARD, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



if 

Stereotyped at the Boston Stereot3'pe Foundry, 
No. 19 Spring Lane. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Nature and spirit of the work. — Definition of the word " infidelity."— Char- 
ity ; its limit. — Invidious use of the word. — Practical infidelity. — Sense in 
which the word is here used. — Etymological meaning-. — To be used with 
discrimination at all times. — Should be boldly applied when deserved. — 
Two sources of infidelity. — Strictly but one source. — Effects of the Fall. — 
Two. opposite mental tendencies. — Each tendency the source of a class of 
infidelities. — Scope of the present work. — Suggestions in advance. — Spec- 
ulative and scientific theories not to be prejudged. — Error not' always to be 
denounced. — Mistake respecting astronomy. — Treatment of geology. — 
Caution respecting Darwinism. — Fondness of clergymen for science. — 
Man's physical nature not a subject of revelation. — A true spirit of reform 
in the church. — Natural history of infidel reformers. — Infidelity welcomes 
those whom the church repels. — The church not innocent. — Should avoid 
a false position. — Duty of the pulpit. — Congregations must co-operate. — 
New England pulpit to be commended. — Effect of a weak pulpit. — Lead- 
ing infidels. — How the exigency is to be met. — The spirit of Christ in his 
people our main reliance. — Duty of ministers. — The whole church must 
have the mind of Christ. — How the spirit of Christ is to be shown. — This 
spirit peculiar to Christianity Pages 1 — 36 



LECTURE I. 

SPINOZA AND OTHER MASTERS. 

. 1 

A singular death-bed scene. — Spinoza's parents religious refugees. — His 

childhood. — His studies. — His defection. — His trial. — His conduct. — 
His excommunication. — A fugitive. — At school. — His love. — His pur- 
pose formed. — Reads Descartes. — Characteristics. — His poverty. — His 

(v) 



VI CONTENTS. 

patience. — His tolerance. — His easy views of all events. — Vagueness of 
ancient writers. — The Alexandrine masters. — Plotinus. — Iamblichus. — 
Proclus. — Plato. — Aristotle. — Xenophanes the Eleatic. — Heraclitus, — 
Pythagoras. — Ilylozoists and others. — The Orientals. — Egyptian specula- 
tion. — Primitive monotheism. —The Chinese. — The Greeks. — Testimony 
from Egypt. — Conclusion of Naville. — Origin of Fetichism. — The Totem of 
the Indians. — Spinoza our starting-point. — Vagueness before him. — Course 
of religious thought sketched. — Spinoza's system the receptacle. — Claims 
of Bruno. — Intellectual activity of the age favorable to Spinoza. — The Ref- 
ormation. — Bacon. — The Pilgrim Fathers. — Richelieu and Cromwell. — 
The Dutch. — Locke. — Newton. — Triumphs of science. — Mathematics. — 
Astronomy. — Optics. — Literature of the seventeenth century. — Theology. — 
Religious writers. — Divine purpose 37 — 73 

LECTURE II. 

THE NATURE AND GROUNDS OF PANTHEISM. 

Definition of pantheism. — How it diifers from theism and atheism. — Wherein 
atheism and pantheism ajrrec. — Language of pantheists often ambiguous. — 
Many names for one thing. — Knowledge of Spinozism which the purpose 
of this work requires. — Descartes was Spinoza's guide. — This doubted. — 
Opinion of Saisset. — Parentage of Descartes. — Early purpose. — Criterion 
of truth. — Not original with Descartes. — Testimony as to Descartes' posi- 
tion. — Four main points in Cartesianism. — " I think, therefore I am."— Crit- 
icism of Gassendi and Huxley. — Descartes to be taken as he understood 
himself. — The Cartesian method. — Descartes' first step. — A foothold for 
Spinozism. — The recognition of Reid's doctrine of necessary truths would 
have saved Descartes. — The Cartesian argument for the divine existence 
favors Spinozism. — The argument for a God which now tends to prevail. — 
Descartes only seems to anticipate this. — How his argument legitimates 
pantheism. — The Cartesian method aids the tendency to pantheism. — The 
tendency further strengthened by his denial of second causes. — Spinoza's 
logic faultless. — The premises of pantheism untenable. — The central posi- 
tion of Spinozism. — The dogmatic result. — Three kinds of knowledge. — 
Some account of the Ethics. — Subject of the Second Part. — Of Part Third. 
— Of Part Fourth. — Of Part Fifth. — Of the First Part. — Definitions. — 
Axioms. — A demonstration. — Perfection of superstructure. — Two attri- 
butes of substance. — Bearing on question of immortality. — Fatalism. — 
The a priori philosophy not to be judged by Spinozism. — Malebranche. — 
Leibnitz. — The safeguard 74—110 



CONTEXTS. Vll 

LECTURE III. 

THE GERMAN SUCCESSION 

A reaction. — Empiricism. — This movement to be passed over for the present. 

— Revival of Spinozism. — What is here attempted. — Relation of Leibnitz 
to the new movement. — The Leibnitz-Wolfiau philosophy. — Kant's earlier 
views. — The need of a critic suggested by Hume. — Critique of the pure 
reason. — Relation of the reason to the understanding. — Space and time 
forms of the reason. — The categories of the understanding. — Ideas of the 
reason. — What they are. — Their subjective nature. — Where this critique 
leaves us. — Kant's plan broader than this sphere of the reason. — Another 
faculty. — Function of the practical reason. — Result not satisfactory. — Cri- 
tique of the judgment. — The object not attained. — Three distinct tendencies 
in Kant. — Reinhold. — Jacobi. — His mystical tendency. — Argues against 
Kant's first critique. — The thinkers of his time not with him. — The inter- 
view with Lessing. — Character of Jacobi. — Hegel's criticism. — Fichte. — 
Thought-activity the only knowable thing. — The non-ego. — A product of 
the ego. — The alternative of atheism or pantheism. — Accused of atheism. — 
Becomes a pantheist. — Unlike Spinoza. — The true wisdom. — Fichte's pan- 
theism ^considered defective. — Schelling. — Grand objection to Fichte. — 
Schellingian doctrine of knowledge. — How Sehclliug reaches the position 
of the pantheist. — His system described. — Agreement with Spinoza. — 
Three potences. — How they work in the evolution of spirit. — Distinction 
between nature and spirit. — How Schelling would account for Christianity. 

— The spirit of Schellirjg's system. — Short continuance of this school of 
pantheism. — Schelling and Edgar A. Poe. — Culminated in Hegel. — The 
best refutation of error its clear statement. — An anachronism. — Hegel. — 
The absolute idea. — Use of Kant's antinomies. — The logical movement.— 
Natural philosophy. — Philosophy of spirit. — Its theological result. — Hegel 
and Kant. — Consequences of the system. — Strauss. — Schleiermaeher. — Xet 
result. — Lesson of the survey now taken. — Testimony of Miiller. Ill — 149 

LECTURE IV. 

THE PANTHEISTIC CHRISTOLOGY. 

Philosophy and religion inseparable. — This more manifest in the a-priori 
philosophy. — Two uses of the word "religion." — When pantheism is a 
religion. — Religions to which pantheism may be applied. — Re-statement of 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Hegelianism. — The absolute idea. — A triplicate process. — Compared with 
Conite's "three states." — Illustrated in history of civilization. — In art. — 
Progress and conservatism. — The absolute idea in religion. — Christianity a 
form of the absolute idea. — Different views of Hegelianism. — The " right." 

— The "left." — The " centre." — Strauss. — His Life of Jesus. — The idea 
in religion alone important.— The question of historic truth trivial. — Essen- 
tial Christianity. — How the idea produced the so-called record. — Criticism 
deals with the non-essential. — Evidence that Strauss was a pantheist. — His 
view of the incarnation. — The origin of the Gospels. — Accepts Spinoza's 
view of Christ. — Thinks his criticism true to the spirit of the narrative. — 
The gospel record a piece of cloud scenery. — Advantage of this pantheistic 
position. — The Paulists. — Evemerus. — His method revived by Lessing in 
Wolfenbiittel fragments. — How used by Paulus. — Results of the theory. — 
Regarded as a failure. — Eichhorn. — De Wette. — Strauss finds germs of his 
theory in them. — Also in Origen and Pbilo. — Relation to other schools of 
criticism. — Secret of popularity. — Three principles of interpretation. — The 
position of Strauss. — The myth. — How he makes room for it. — The idea 
produces the story. — What follows if the Gospels are post-apostolic. — In- 
ternal evidence against Strauss. — Also external evidence. — How he would 
evade it. — The argument against him overwhelming. — Baur. — Differs from 
Strauss. — How he accounts for the Gospels. — Traces of a conflict. — Pauline 
party favored. — Peter overborne. — Paul triumphs. — The reasoning of Raur 
not admissible. — No special refutation needed. — There were parties in the 
early church.-- Baur's treatment unfair. — An argument for inspiration. — 
Renan. — Requires no special treatment. — Spirit of his criticism pantheistic. 

— An irreverent comparison. — Free religion. — Its peculiarity. — May be 
traced to Hegel. — Christianity triumphant 150—182 



LECTURE V. 

THE CULTURE WHICH PANTHEISM LEGITIMATES. 

A feature of modern thought. — Spontaneity. — Authority. — New theory un- 
tenable. — Relation to pantheism. — Goethe. — Why chosen. — Viewed only 
in one aspect. — Relation to other thinkers of his age. — Ignorance of his 
speculative views. — Early scepticism. — Proofs that he was a pantheist.— 
Meets with Jacobi. — Wished to be known as a Spinozist. — Fatalism. — Di- 
vineness of nature. — Free necessity. — Tone of his writings. — The two 
Goethes. — As a student of nature. — Works in which he shows to advantage. 
— Shorter poems. — Iphigenia in Tauris. — Egmont. — Hermann and Doro- 
thea. — Wherein his theory works evil. — Faust. — Goetz von Berlichingen. 



CONTENTS. IX 

— False theory of morals. — Popularity of Goetz. — Sorrows of Werther. — 
Its influence. — Origin of the work. — Complaints of his friends. — Wilhelm 
Meister. — The Fair Saint. — Fhilina. — Mignon. — Other characters. — Elec- 
tive affinities. — Natalia and Wilhelm. — Goethe's theoretical views carried 
into his life. — His faults not to be passed over. — Had noble traits. — Was 
not a patriot. — Goethe not consistent with his theory of culture. — Would 
have been better as a man if more inconsistent. — Allowance to be made to 
art.— .The obligations of the artist. — Christianity teaches the only adequate 
theory of human culture 183 — 226 

LECTURE VI. 

PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF HERO-WORSHIP. 

The representative name. — Method of treatment. — Carlyle's position in Eng- 
lish literature. — His style. — Ethical tendency. — A political reformer. — 
Was he a pantheist? — Not in the dogmatic sense. — Proofs of a pantheistic 
spirit. — His idea of history. — Of the individual. — Views of nature panthe- 
istic. — His doctrine of necessity. — Of space and time. — Keligious views. — 
Bibles. — Origin of worship. — Sincerity alone essential. — Accepts Goethe's 
definition of religion. — Result. — How his pantheism affects his political 
views. — Makes him revolutionary. — French Revolution. — Laws and com- 
pacts not the basis of true government. — Function of representative assem- 
blies. — Hates democracy as much as constitutional monarchy. — Eulogy of 
the Pilgrims. — Mahometanism as good as Puritanism. — No love for free 
government in any case. — Scorn of moral and social reforms. — Origin of his 
contempt for democracies. — Negative side of his political creed. — His polit- 
ical and social creed positively stated. — Hero-worship. — This the basis of 
primitive governments. — Urged as the only real basis. — Great men a the- 
ophany. — Carlyle's ideal of a great man. — Plea for his theory of govern- 
ment. — The result of the theory is anarchy. — Hero-worship contrasted with 
Christianity 227—267 

LECTURE VII. 

PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF SELF-WORSHIP. 

Individualism. — Represented by Emerson. — Method of treatment. — Con- 
trasted with Carlyle. — His excellent temper. — Of purer tone than Goethe. 

— Monotony. — Nomenclature. — "Old Two-Face." — Comprehensive state- 



: CONTENTS. 

ments of pantheism. — AH things are God. — History. — Literature. — God a 
gentleman. — Love. — Prayer. — What Emerson has to say of personality. — 
An ignis fatuus. — God impersonal. —But one conclusion possible. — Emer- 
son's method. — Consciousness the way to all truth. — No mean egotism. — 
Definition of man. — The varieties of genius forms of the divine conscious- 
ness. — Teaches the pantheistic fatalism. — All things subject to fate. — No 
one can do otherwise than he does. — All life natural. — Emerson's use of 
words literal rather than rhetorical. — Even fate a mystery. — The objective 
world in the light of Emerson's philosophy. — History absorbed into the 
soul. — All literature the biography of each man. — A practical result. — Na- 
ture an evolution of the soul. — The world man externized. — Knowledge of 
nature but self knowledge. — Emerson's theory of nature that of every sub- 
jective idealist. — More specific injunctions. — Duty of self-reverence. — Self- 
reliance. — Self-assertion. — The moral law wholly subjective. — Duty of 
self-isolation. — To be wholly self-absorbed the highest blessedness. — " Men 
descend to meet." — Misanthropy. — Attitude towards the Bible and Christian- 
ity. — Insinuates that Christ was a pantheist. — Spirit of the two contrasted. 
— Emerson would unsettle all things. — No philanthropist. — Scorn of the 
masses. — No moral distinctions. — Better than his theory. — Inconsistency 
recommended. — The good man forced to be a hypocrite. — Transcendentalism 
not to be judged by Emerson. — Christian faith the grand safeguard. 268—316 



LECTURE YIIL 

THEISM WITH A PANTHEISTIC DRIFT. 

Theodore Parker. — Disliked to be called an infidel. — Did not bow to Christ as 
the final authority in religion. — Affirms that Jesus was in error on many 
subjects. — Calls Christ and the Bible idols. — Unitarians denounced for 
retaining them. — What Parkerism finds in Christ. — The Old Testament 
long since outgrown. — His idea of religious progress. — The positive side 
of Parkerism. — Terms used to designate it. — Parker less original than he 
supposed. — Three factors of the absolute religion. — The sentiment. — The 
idea. — The conception. — The conception alone varies. — Origin of religions. 
— Their succession traced. — Parkerism to be superseded. — Theory of reli- 
gious progress refuted by history. — Obscures the character of God. — Weak- 
ens our basis of hope for man. — The doctrine of redemption rational. — 
Parker not simply a theist. — Was he a pantheist ? — A re-statement of the 
alternative of unbelief. — Parker could not be a positivist. — Pantheism may 
be mistaken for positivism. — Parker not a materialist. — Denies the possi- 
bility of atheism. — Denied that he was a pantheist. — But his definition is 



CONTEXTS. XI 

inadequate. — Acquits Spinoza. — Admits the thing- while disowning- the 
name. — More positive proofs of pantheism. — Held the Kantian philosophy. 

— His definition of God does not exclude pantheism. — All men theists. — 
Misrepresents pantheists. — Identifies God with the world. — With God sub- 
ject and object are the same. — The fault of deism. — His view of immor- 
tality pantheistic. — God immanent in all things. — He is the substantiality 
of matter. — Men not responsible for the religion they hold. — Different 
religions a necessity of circumstances. — All the same at bottom. — An endless 
succession of religions. — The pantheistic fatalism. — Absolute toleration. — 
No second causes. — Creation and providence the same thing. — All action in 
nature^od's action. — Held to the mathematical method. — God impersonal. 

— Makes personality the same as anthropomorphism. — God personal only in 
a rhetorical sense. — Our conception of God wholly subjective. — God is uni- 
versal being. — Parker to be judged by his tendency. — The school of theism. 

— His real tendency held in check. — Character of his scholarship. — Relation 
to the Unitarians. — Some of his strongest supporters disowned his theology. 

— Early statements of his views most decided. — His most scriptural preach- 
ing best liked. — The fate of philosophy when bereft of faith in Christ. — The 
Rock of Ages 317—361 



LECTURE IX. 

THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF PANTHEISM. 

Recapitulation. — Authors excluded from this survey. — Refutation of panthe- 
ism. — This went along with the exposition. — The clear statement of error 
its best refutation. — Every pantheist has something peculiar to himself. — 
Wherein they agree. — Spinoza's method cannot reach ontology. — Same 
fault in Fichte and Emerson. — Function of consciousness mistaken. — Dif- 
fers from the faculty of intuition. — What is granted for argument's sake. — 
The infinity of God saul' to involve pantheism. — This argument assumes 
what the pantheist has denied. — The essence of personality is free-will. — 
God the only perfect person. — The assertion that the mind can act only 
where it is. — Contradicted by our necessary beliefs. — Whatever else fails 
must insist on these. — The duty of mental science to these first truths. — 
The claim of comprehensiveness. — This claim cannot be made good. — Im- 
portant truths which pantheism excludes. — Gives precedence to an inferior 
faculty. — All the faculties of the mind should be recognized. — Precedence 
due the moral faculty. — The emphasis of the soul demands this. — Every 
honest nature welcomes it. — The doctrine of the divine immanency said to 
be a source of power. — Proves too much. — The real power not limited to 



Xll CONTENTS. 

this doctrine. — Bryant. — Thomson. — These have as much poetical vantage- 
ground as Emerson. — Source of immorality in literature. — Joaquin Miller. 

— Good men exposed to peril. — The doctrine of the divine immanency a 
weakness of pantheism. — The argument from great men. — Pantheism can- 
not claim these. — Transcendentalism can. — They have escaped the perils of 
that philosophy. — Metaphysics in education. — Better than physical science. 

— Opinion of Hamilton. — Scientific eras barren of literature. — The vaunted 
honors stolen. — Purity of life in the teacher not a test of his doctrine. — The 
ethical criterion. — Christianity above patronage. — How men may become 
pantheists. — Times in which pantheism may be popular. — Legitimates dis- 
order. — Our exposure to the peril. — Our defence. — Something bagger than 
pantheism offers. — Conclusion. — A feeling of relief. — Richter's dream. — 
Pantheism cannot reach what is best in us. — The prayer of Schiller's father 
surpasses anything in Goethe. — Power of the twenty-third Psalm. 362 — 398 



INTRODUCTION. 



My purpose, in the lectures which follow, is to Nature and 

1 l m m m spirit of the 

treat of pojmlar infidelity, — its sources, its devel- work. 
opraent, and its relation to what is known as the Biblical 
or Christian system. This work is not undertaken in a 
controversial or partisan spirit. I am no dogmatist or 
polemic, though my point of view, to which much patient 
study has led me, is the supernaturalism of Jesus of Naz- 
areth. It seemed needful to say this at the outset, owing 
to the acrimonious and denunciatory style in which, for 
the most part, the questions between Christianity and its 
assailants have been hitherto debated. The natural 'pre- 
sumption, in view of the past, is, that whoever appears on 
this field has only entered into the strifes of other zealots ; 
that he comes as a warrior thirsting for victims, and in no 
sense as an inquirer. The terms which this ancient de- 
bate has bequeathed to us, and to some of which a certain 
odium still adheres, cannot be now laid aside. They have 
such a currency, in the language of the day, that no can- 
did person will charge it to bigotry or unfairness, but 
purely to the necessity of the case, that they continue to 
be used. It will be seen, in the title which I have chosen 

1 



2 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

for this work, that I regard many forms of infidelity as 
half truths, at least in their origin. Believing that the 
human intellect naturally craves truth, I shall not easily 
be persuaded that any body of doctrines, which has been 
put forth by earnest thinkers, is unmixed error ; nor shall 
I fail, so far as the nature of my undertaking will permit, 
to point out the merits of writers whom, as to their main 
tenets, I may feel bound to condemn. Some of those 
writers manifest, at times, a calm spirit of inquiry which 
their critics would do well to emulate. It is not only law- 
ful, but often greatly for our advantage, to learn from 
those with whom we disagree. Truth has not as yet re- 
vealed itself wholly to any finite mind ; and the remark 
of Him who was the Truth, about the beam in the eye 
which sees the mote in a brother's eye, is not altogether 
inapplicable to those who are defending scriptural doctrine 
against the assaults of infidelity. 
Definition The word "infidelity" is so loosely used by 

of the word 

"infidelity." the writers and speakers of our time, that one 
might almost despair of being able to define it. And yet, 
owing to this great variety of usage, there seems all the 
more need, if we would understand each other in what is 
to follow, that its meaning should be brought within 
some tolerably well settled limits. We certainly 

Charity, . . . . ' . . ., 

ought, m simple justice, to distinguish Detween 
systems of infidelity and the persons who confess them- 
selves more or less in accord with those systems. In no 
way, perhaps, is it more easy to overstep the bounds of 
charity, than in identifying individuals with theories which 
they cannot make up their minds to reject utterly, or for 
which they express a partial sympathy. The intercourse 



IXTKODUCTION. 3 

of life puts us in contact with many men and women 
holding theoretically to what is called infidelity in the lan- 
guage of the schools, yet our personal acquaintance with 
whom convinces us that to call them "infidels " would be 
the grossest injustice. We are constantly running against 
infidelities, yet are forced to own that there is an amazing 
scarcity of infidels. This may be accounted for Andit8 
in j^art by the odium attaching to the word, limit " 
which causes most persons to dread it, and to resent 
the application of it to themselves. Therefore our char- 
ity should have a limit. Though many are raised above 
their theoretical unbeliefs by a natural and acquired good- 
ness, yet there are those whom the word " infidel " alone 
can properly describe to us ; nor should we hesitate thus 
to distinguish such, wherever we find them. 

The invidious use of this term in theological contro- 
versy must strike all fair minds as the extreme of invidious 

• use of the 

meanness and cowardly un manliness. It always word, 
injures the cause in whose behalf it is employed. When 
not a confession of weakness, it is a blunder. All are 
repelled by it, save those whom prejudice or rude pas- 
sion has blinded ; nor does it influence even these, except 
for the time being. Though the poisoned arrow with 
which a prostrate antagonist seeks to wound his con- 
queror, though the desperate cry by which he summons 
to his rescue the pack of ignorant and noisy zealots, yet 
it ever fails to deliver him, while at the same time it 
makes his defeat doubly disgraceful. 

We often have occasion to use the phrase "practical 
infidelity." These words, whether used in the p ractical 
pulpit or religious literature, point especially mfidellt 3 r> 



4 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

to those persons in the Christian church who practise the 
forms of a godly life while destitute of its power. They 
lack sincerity in their confessions and worship. Amid all 
their attention to the formalities of religion, their rigid 
orthodoxy of opinion, and punctilious regard for what is 
outward and ceremonial, there is in them an evil heart of 
unbelief. Inwardly, and so far as witnessing for Christ 
before men goes, they are full of heresy and alienation 
from the truth. The fruits which they produce in their 
lives are no better than if they made no pretence of be- 
lieving the doctrines which Christ taught. This is the 
infidelity which God visits with his special abhorrence. 
It was the great sin of the Jews, bringing upon them a 
worse fate than overtook Sodom and Gomorrah. The 
gospel, with its doctrine of the new birth and freedom 
from external rites, was given to rescue man, if possible, 
from this demon of doubt, which is so apt to creep into 
the heart of the formal religionist. 

Sense in But tne use °f tm3 word "infidelity" does 

worfifnow not > m an y °f tQe cases now noticed, touch the 
subject-matter which I propose to treat. We 
are concerned with the unbelief which has become an in- 
tellectual theory ; to the support of which logic and argu- 
ment are summoned; which assails the Christian system, 
affects to be in some real sense its rival, and seeks, by dint 
of philosophical reasoning, to displace it. I should say 
that any person who does not recognize the authority of 
Christ as final on all questions of religious faith, is, in the 
judgment of the largest charity, an infidel. Even Profess- 
or Newman, the radical religionist, is candid enough to 
say, "It is evident that we must either quite disown the 



INTRODUCTION. 

Gospels, or admit that Christ regarded men as impious 

who did not bow before him as an authoritative teacher." 

Strictly speaking, an infidel is one who has Etymologi- 
cal mean- 
apostatized. This is according to the etymology ing. 

of the word. The first Christians used it, I suspect, as 
those in later times certainly did, to designate one who, 
after attaching himself to Christ, had become unfaithful, or 
had forsaken him. A distinction is thus made between 
the infidel and such as have never believed on Christ's 
name. He is a far baser person than the pagan, who, 
having no knowledge of Christ, nor at any time confessing 
him as Lord, cannot be charged with unfaithfulness to 
him. But we need not use the term in this harsh sense. 
Though the infidel of to-day is one who dwells where 
Christ is preached, and who therefore may have fallen 
away from the Christian faith into his present state of 
unbelief, yet his heart does not plead guilty to the charge 
of treachery. He may have a conviction of honesty, and 
the approval of conscience, in what he has done. All this 
we are ready to grant him ; nor do we, in applying to him 
a term which usage has made current, mean anything be- 
yond what he is ready to acknowledge ; namely, that he 
has rejected Christ as the supreme authority in matters of 
religious faith. Such, I take it, is the most legitimate 
application of the word at present. I do not propose 
to employ it, save in this perfectly fair and honorable 
method. 

If the word "infidelity" be odious to-day, the odium is 
in the character of those who have been its advocates. 
To be an infidel is no more a shame now, than to be cru- 
cified was a shame in the time of Christ. But Christ and 



D HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

his followers have made the cross glorious. If infidels 
cannot thus transfigure their reproach, this but proves the 
To be care- absurdity of their claims. Those who set up no 
even in its' claim in opposition to Christ, who acknowl- 

milder sense. -i -i • ,i ,-T •, v • 

edge him as the supreme authority in religion, 
who accept his word as that by which any religious doc- 
trine is to be judged, are improperly called infidels, li 
is an abuse of language, as well as contrary to the " new 
commanrnnent " in the gospel, when the various Christian 
bodies thus brand each other. Some of those bodies may 
seem to us to teach fatal error, and we may conscien- 
tiously refuse to have fellowship with them ; but so long 
as they make Christ their Master, we have no good right 
to call them infidels. To misinterpret the divine Teach- 
er's words is not the same thing as denying his authority. 
Men may differ widely as to what Christ taught, — so 
widely as to be unable to dwell together in ecclesiastical 
fraternity, — and yet be equally earnest in maintaining 
Should be tnat Christ is Lord. Where this supremacy is 
pHedfwEere not accorded, however ; where any one has 
deserved. re j e cted Christ, after full opportunity to know 
him ;• and not only that, but has framed this his denial 
into a positive creed, and is seeking to establish it as true by 
what he regards as rational argument, — there we should 
recognize infidelity, in the proper sense of the term. He 
has investigated and reflected, till he has come to certain 
conclusions ; and those conclusions are entirely subversive 
of Christianity as an authoritative religion. This their 
logical effect he sees, and not only makes no effort to 
avoid it, but stoutly insists upon it. What the treatises 
are, which come within this definition, I do not now under- 



INTRODUCTION. J 

take to say. The catalogue of modern infidelities need 
hot be given. Any list which I might draw up would be 
regarded by some as incomplete; while others might 
accuse it of injustice, saying that it included speculations 
worthy of better company. It is enough to have given a 
criterion, — entirely fair, I think all must admit, — by 
which we may each determine the religious bearing of any 
book or utterance that meets us. Whatever claims pre- 
eminence over Christ, or denies to him the supremacy in 
matters of religious faith, or lays down propositions known 
to be subversive of his authority, is an infidelity. In that 
view of it, although associated with much that we admire, 
and even approve, it deserves no quarter at our hands. 
As the disciples of Christ, believing that he spoke the ab- 
solute truth, and concerned for the well-being of men as 
truly as for his honor, we are bound to unmask the in- 
truder, and battle against it under its proper designation. 

As to the sources of these various infidelities Two sources 
which are around us, and throughout the Chris- of mfidellt y- 
tian world, one need feel less hesitation in speaking. 
They seem to me to be reducible to tvjo sources — Pan- 
theism, represented by Spinoza, and Positivism, repre- 
sented by Comte. Some may be inclined to add a third 
source, namely, Deism. But this is hardly more than a 
dependent form of infidelity. It rests on no steady foun- 
dation of its own, but is always falling away into either 
Pantheism or Positivism, where it is not happily exalted 
into Christianity. 

But even this statement may be simplified ; str j Ct]y but 
for, in the last analysis, all forms of religious onesource - 



8 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

error may be brought to a single source — the separation 
of man from God. It was in the garden of Eden that 
these poisonous waters, still polluting the earth, took their 
rise. When man fell from his Maker's embrace, then 
immediately infidelity began. It is evident, since man 
came forth from God, that his faculties must have acted 
abnormally, leading him astray constantly in all his 
searches after truth, as soon as he had separated himself 
from God. This may seem to be a sweeping remark ; for 
it might be said that many persons, into whose thoughts 
the idea of a God almost never enters, have yet been suc- 
cessful students of nature, of history, of the human mind ; 
have shown excellent judgment in matters of business, 
and in all that concerns the welfare of the state. But this 
latter remark seems to me to need qualification, rather 
Effects of tnan tne otner - If ^ e l°°k at human conduct 
the* ail. comprehensively, — if we consider it in all its 
relations, and follow it on to its remoter issues, — we shall 
find that it is never thoroughly wise while acting indepen- 
dently of God. The statesman does not plan what is best 
for the state, the reformer mingles much of evil with his 
good, and the most successful man of business fails in 
certain important respects while not inspired and kept by 
a divine influence. In no partial sense, but in the broad- 
est sense, it is true that " the fear of the Lord is the be- 
ginning of wisdom." We cannot separate material inter- 
ests from spiritual, or temporal from eternal. Profitable- 
ness and ungodliness, wisdom and atheism, are never 
joined together. The human mind acts abnormally on all 
subjects, mistaking eiTor for truth, and confounding suc- 
cess with failure, as soon as it has departed from God. 



INTRODUCTION. 9 

The finite is safe only in the embrace of the infinite. 
" Were God, and man's relation to God, to become the 
central and informing sonl of all knowledge and all stud- 
ies," says Dr. John Young, of Edinburgh, "then philos- 
ophy would spring into new life, and become at once more 
ennobling and more profound; science would become 
more luminous and more quickening; literature would 
catch a new glow and flush from the breath of heaven, 
and be more enkindling and more beauteous; art would 
be radiant with a sweeter, a holier, and a diviner grace. 
It is the most fatal of all mistakes to judge that the lov- 
ing sense of God, in the soul, is one which we may have 
or want, indifferently. It is an absolute necessity to our 
being. Religion is not a separate department of human 
knowledge — a branch, like other branches of human 
inquiry. It is rather the all-encompassing atmosphere, in 
which, whatever be our studies or works, we can alone 
truly breathe and live ; the one inspiring influence, which 
alone puts a soul into our efforts, and gives them a divine 
meaning. Religion is the sum of the whole inner nature, 
intellectual, moral and spiritual, without which all is ster- 
ile, cold, and dark." 1 

But this primal source of infidelity, of all Twooppo- 

Jr t . site mental 

errors in religion, whether modern or ancient, tendencies, 
transcends the purpose of our present inquiry. We are 
concerned with the two heads — Pantheism and Positiv- 
ism — into which it has become divided. The human 
mind, being separate from God, wanders ; and it wanders 
in two different paths, or by two opposite methods, ac- 
cording to certain inherent tendencies. Coleridge has 

] ' Light and Life of Men ' (London and New York, 1886), pp. 495, 496. 



10 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 

remarked that all men are born either Aristotelians or Pla- 
tonists. Perhaps it would be stating the case more intel- 
ligibly to some, to say that all men are born either Baconi- 
ans or Cartesians. All who think are a-posteriori or 
a-priori thinkers. They either make the outer world of 
sense and experience, or the inner world of consciousness, 
their starting-point ; reason from effects to causes, or from 
causes to effects. Emerson expresses this fact by say- 
ing, "Mankind have ever been divided into two sects, 
materialists and idealists ; the first class founding on ex- 
perience, the second on consciousness; the first class 
beginning to think from the data of the senses ; the sec- 
ond class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, 
the senses give us representations of things, but what are 
the things themselves they cannot tell. The materialist 
insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, 
and the animal wants of man ; the idealist on the power 
of thought and of will, on inspiration, on miracle, on indi- 
vidual culture." 1 This language overstates the distinc- 
tion in some particulars, though the brilliant essayist was 
right as to the existence and universality of the fact. It 
may be doubted whether any thinker ever does, or ever 
can, pursue one of these methods to the exclusion of the 
other ; but they are sufficiently distinct to mark two con- 
flicting schools of thought, to indicate two radically dif- 
ferent intellectual tendencies in men. " Not of choice," 
says Dr. Young, "but in consequence of a real necessity, 
occasioned by their individual structure, men are materi- 
alistic or spiritualistic, logical or philosophical, argumen- 
tative or intuitional, the one and the other alike being 

i Miscellanies (Boston, 1858), pp. 320, 321. 



INTRODUCTION". 11 

simply the effect of original mental conformation. They 

limit themselves to the range of the understanding, and 

to what can be submitted to its processes and decisions ; 

or they love to ascend to the region of the supersensual, 

and covet intensely the higher revelations of a disciplined 

faith. The two orders are ever ranged on opposites, in 

theology, in philosophy, and in real life. Respecting the 

origin of the universe, the question of a First Cause, the 

being and character of God, the introduction of evil into 

the universe, the nature of volition, the final destiny of 

man, they are always essentially divided, and are rightly 

distinguished as empiricists and transcendentalists." 1 

Now, both these tendencies, which would ever Each ten- 
dency the 
proceed aright and harmoniously in union with source o< a 

. J class of in- 

God, being without that inspiration and guid- fidelities, 
ance, are constantly going astray. Thus it is that each 
tendency becomes the source, or creates the centre and 
root, of a distinct class of infidelities. If the mental ten- 
dency be transcendental, it ultimates itself in Pantheism ; 
if it be empirical, it ultimates itself in Positivism. Such 
I conceive to be, in each case, the genesis of the two oppo- 
site sources of modern infidelity. All religious errors, 
which are subversive of Christianity in their aim, have 
either no claim on our notice, do not even deserve to be 
refuted, or may be traced to one of these two fountains. 
Between these two extremes the irreligious mind of the 
race has been ever swinging, — wearily swinging, with a 
pendulous motion, while the hand on the dial has marked 
the steady advance of the kingdom of Christ. Whenever 
the prevailing philosophy of the world has been transcen- 

i Light and Life of Men, p. 102. 



12 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

dental, the prevailing infidelity has been pantheistic; and 
when that philosophy has been empirical, the infidelity has 
had in it more or less of positivism. Ancient Buddhism 
is associated with the philosophy of the senses, Brahman- 
ism with that of consciousness. Descartes gave the a-pri- 
ori method to Europe, and out of that method sprang 
Spinozism; Bacon and Locke gave the a-posteriori, which 
was pushed forward into sensationalism. Kant taught a 
spiritual philosophy, and Hegel was, in some real sense, 
his successor; the prevailing philosophy of the present 
time is materialistic, and Comtism is the infidelity which 
claims its protection. In Germany, where thinking has 
had more to do with ideas than with facts, pantheism has 
had a prodigious growth ; in France, where the study of 
what is outward prevails, positivism finds its home and 
stronghold. Infidelity has existed all along through the 
history of our race, ever since man first departed from 
God; and it will continue to exist, in every nation and 
age, till men are restored to God in Christ. In ages and 
countries where thought is chiefly concerned with the 
material and outward, the forms of infidelity will have 
their ground in positivism; in those times and places 
where truth is sought chiefly in consciousness, pantheism 
will be the informing spirit of unbelief. One or the other 
of these two yokes of bondage men will wear, until deliv- 
ered into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
Scope of the A full and adequate treatment of the topics 
work. contemplated in these lectures would include, 

therefore, 

I. A Critical History of Pantheism, with a 

REFUTATION OF IT UPON PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS ; 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

II. A Similar History of Positivism, with a like 
refutation; and 

III. A Statement of the manner in which Chris- 
tianity MEETS THAT HUMAN WANT WHICH THEY ARE 
FOREVER FLATTERING ONLY TO DELUDE. 

This whole vast field is more than I can hope to ex- 
plore, in the series of lectures which here follows. It 
will be enough, and more than I dare promise, if even 
tolerable justice be done to the first main department 
namely, Pantheism. And inasmuch as there is a wide 
field of examination to go over, requiring us to eliminate 
and define the errors which may be classed under this 
head, thus at length preparing the way for argument 
against them; considering, I say, that we must wait so 
long without formally replying, while the authors on trial 
are allowed to speak for themselves in large part, I deem 
it proper, in the remainder of this Introduction, Sucrcre8tiong 
to make a few suggestions of general import, iu advance - 
as to the most effective methods of meeting and fore- 
stalling any forms of religious error. 

1. In the first place, the defenders of the speculative 
Christian system should not be too ready to tine theories 
condemn, as a form of infidelity, every new spec- prejudged. 
ulation, or scientific theory, which may happen to be put 
forth. This premature judgment may be reversed by a 
later and more intelligent verdict. The friends of Chris- 
tianity will then be convicted of hindering the cause they 
sought to forward ; of ignorantly putting forth their hand 
to steady the sacred ark where it was in no danger. The 
new theory or speculation may be yet in its infancy, crude, 



14 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

broached in the tentative rather than the dogmatic form. 
If alarmists within the church would be at pains to know 
the author personally, they might find him a devout and 
reverent thinker, as much concerned for the honor of 
Christianity as themselves. Perhaps he has carefully con- 
sidered the very points at which they stumble, and sees a 
way of justifying them to his Christian faith which has 
not occurred to his critics. Why should they stultify 
themselves by raising a false alarm ? Very likely he only 
puts his views into the form of an inquiry at first, and 
leaves them at the tribunal of reason and common sense. 
Why need we, in our concern for the Bible, rush upon 
them frantically, or blow our trumpets for a warning, be- 
fore tfrose theories have won a sure foothold, even in the 
scientific or philosophical world ? When they have passed 
over that frontier, coming safely out of every struggle, 
and surviving every attack on their proper ground, then 
it will be early enough for us to conclude whether or 
not our batteries should open upon them. Multitudes of 
them are overthrown and trodden down, while running 
the gantlet wholly outside of our domain; and if here 
and there one escapes, surviving the opposition of rival 
theories, and overcoming the severest scientific criticism, 
this fact should be taken as presumptive evidence that it 
comes to us, not as an enemy, but as a friend ; for truth 
cannot be the foe of truth. 
Error not ai- Even where we detect grave signs of error, 

ways to be . *. . . 

denounced, it may be wiser to seek fellowship than to with- 
draw it'. It was Judaism that said, " Get thee out of thy 
country, and from thy kindred ; " Christianity says, " Go 
ye into the world." Perhaps Luther was wrong in think- 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

ing that the Reformers could do most for their cause by 
staying in the Papal church. Perhaps they are mistaken 
who think that the churches of New England lost ground 
by withdrawing from Arianism in Dr. Channing's time. 
But as long as the honor of Christ will permit, we should 
avoid driving any new error into an open declaration of 
war. It may be no more than the pet delusion of a few 
individuals, and, at the worst, will live only while they 
live, if let alone. By assailing it we provoke it to take 
positive ground ; at once put its advocates out of the reach 
of our Christian influence ; enable it to raise against us the 
cry of persecution, which will be sure to bring crowds of 
curious and sympathetic people to its support ; and thus a 
party may be organized, through which its influence will 
be vastly widened, and prolonged far beyond the term of 
its natural life. A broad wisdom, gleaned from the fields 
of history and experience, admonishes us to brand no man 
as a teacher of infidelity, till absolutely compelled to by 
our loyalty to Christ. Whoever does not insist on being 
the enemy of Revealed Religion, should be esteemed its 
friend. 

Great harm was done to the cause of Christ, Mistake re- 

. t n n specting As- 

when his church condemned, as of infidel ten- tronomy. 
dency, some of the earlier astronomical discoveries. We 
are amazed now, that the fathers of the church should 
make themselves a tribunal to judge the Copernican theory, 
and that they should proceed to condemn it, declaring it 
to be a damnable heresy. Not that Copernicus himself 
was thus condemned. Being one of the devoutest men of 
his times, living amidst powerful friends who wisely guarded 
his reputation, and not publishing his great discovery till 



16 HALF TRUTHS AjSTD THE TRUTH. 

just as he died, he escaped ecclesiastical censure. It was 
reserved for Galileo, his follower in the next century, to 
bear the Papal condemnation ; by which his name has been 
lifted up, as an everlasting warning to theologians, not to 
make their own ignorance a throne of judgment, from 
which to hurl anathemas at the novelties of science and 
philosophy. 

Treatment of Yet that warning has not been always heeded, 
eo ogy. rpj^ ki unc | er f those Romish doctors was re- 
peated as late as the present century, when the theories of 
geologists began to challenge attention. How many stu- 
dents of the new science were thus repelled, from what 
they mistook as the narrowness and bigotry of Christianity, 
until they became open opposers of the church and its 
teachings, we shall know only in the day of the revelation 
of all things. It is not these denunciatory champions, who 
seem to be born with the scent of religious error in their 
nostrils, that Christianity needs. They do much harm to 
her sacred cause. Such men as Thomas Chalmers are the 
rather our examples. When the ministers of Scotland 
were beginning to raise their hue and cry against geology, 
he exclaimed, "This is a false alarm. The writings of 
Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe. If they fix 
anything at all, it is only the antiquity of the species." 
These great words produced a revolution, and prevented a 
revolution. They were caught up, and shouted throughout 
the United Kingdom, till geologists saw they had no cause 
to rebel against the church, and the church saw she had 
no occasion for denouncing geology. It was this noble 
stand which made Chalmers the champion, at once, ftf both 
the new science, and Christianity. From that time forth 



INTRODUCTION. 17 

geology was mainly a Christian science in Great Britain ; 
whereas, but for that grand utterance and leadership, it 
would, from all that now appears, have speedily fallen into 
infidel hands. 

At the present day there is a controversy, Caution 

respecting 

going on in the scientific world, respecting Darwinism, 
which the friends of Christianity need to beware. I 
refer to the Darwinian theory of the origin of species 
through natural selection, which argues that all the animal 
races now on the earth have been developed out of one 
central mass of life ; and its opposing theory, held by 
Agassiz among others, according to which there are many 
such centres, so distinct in the near past that even the races 
of men could not all have descended from a single pair. 
The nature of this controversy, and its attitude towards 
certain portions of the Bible, are thus stated by Professor 
Huxley : " The hypotheses respecting the origin of species 
which profess to stand on a scientific basis, and, as such, 
alone demand serious attention, are of two kinds. The 
one, the 'special creation' hypothesis, presumes every 
species to have originated from one or more stocks, these 
not being the result of the modification of any other form 
of living matter, or arising by natural agencies, but being 
produced, as such, by a supernatural creative act. The 
other, the so-called ' transmutation ' hypothesis, considers 
that all existing species are the result of the modification 
of pre-existing species, and those of their predecessors, by 
agencies similar to those which, at the present day, pro- 
duce varieties and races, and therefore in an altogether 
natural way; and it is a probable, though not a necessary 
consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have 
2 



18 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

arisen from a single stock. The doctrine of special 
creation owes its existence very largely to the supposed 
necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cos- 
mogony ; but it is curious to observe that, as the doctrine 
is at present maintained by men of science, it is as hope- 
lessly inconsistent with the Hebrew view as any other 
hypothesis." 1 The relative merits of the two theories, as 
judged by our scriptural standards, are certainly well 
stated in the closing words of this paragraph, though 
Huxley is inexcusably reckless in assuming that he knows 
precisely what the Hebrew view, as he calls it, was. It is 
plain that those who adhere to the common interpretation 
of the first of Genesis must reject both these theories. 
When they applaud Agassiz for some hard blow given to 
Darwin, they ought not to forget that Agassiz is no cham- 
pion of theirs, but quite as hostile to them as his opponent. 
And are we yet sure that either of them is hostile to the 
inspired record, so much as to what translators and inter- 
preters have made that record say ? One or the other of 
the two theories may be destined to prevail ; and we can 
afford to wait undisturbed, while the battle goes forward 
in the outer Court of science, not taking up our weapons 
till either " special creation," or " transmutation," having 
been declared victor there, shall assail the sanctuary of our 
religious faith. Why should we excommunicate zoology, 
even after its own friends are at peace, so long as it is sure 
that our sacred philology has yet a great deal to learn ? If 
it becomes the settled creed of the scientific world, as few 
anticipate, I suspect, that the races of men sprang from 

1 Lay Sermons and Addresses (Appleton & Co., New York, 1S71), pp. 279, 280. 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

several distinct origins, the laws of language may be trusted 
to show us that no word- of the Bible, claiming to come 
from God, contradicts that creed. And on the other hand, 
if some improved form of Darwinism becomes established, 
as is now extremely probable, the task of the Bible inter- 
preter will be comparatively easy. I have no expectation 
that this Development theory will be proved true, as it is 
held and applied by some of its advocates. But if it fore- 
shadows a natural truth, respecting the origin of the human 
race, which may yet be brought out by scientific research, 
we have every reason to believe that that truth, whatever 
it is, will not contradict, but establish the words of God. 
We should not too hastily assail it, even though it may 
have seemed thus far to be against us ; remembering — as 
Coleridge so nobly says — that an error is sometimes the 
shadow of a great truth yet below the horizon. Let us 
not bequeath to the future a fresh instance of theologi- 
cal blundering, compelling those after us to look back on 
our treatment of zoology with as much shame as we 
now look back on the ado made about geology and as- 
tronomy. 

It has been too much the fashion to charge Fondness of 

. -,. . . Clergymen 

upon the clergy this prejudice against science for Science. 
which I now deprecate. In one view of the case there 
could hardly be a greater injustice. Whatever may 
have been true in the past, no class of men are now more 
tolerant of scientific theories, or give them more respectful 
attention. Suspicion is not the rule, but the exception, 
and' rarely appears, save in those least enlightened. Every 
new truth in science is another pillar of theology. It can 



20 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

be shown that even the persecutions of Galileo were not 
due to the clergy so much as to the jealousy of certain 
other philosophers ; and a full knowledge of all the facts 
would no doubt prove, in similar cases, that wrong has 
been done in representing Christian ministers as hostile 
to scientific pursuits. They show an interest in such 
studies which naturalists have been slow to reciprocate. 
They have done more than any other class to familiarize 
the public with the best science of the times. And I am 
happy, in making these statements, to find that no less a 
personage than Professor Tyndall is ready to confirm them. 
"What he says of the clergy of England, and especially of 
the clergy of London, is still more emphatically true of 
the better part of the profession in America. " They have 
nerve enough," says Tyndall, addressing his brother scien- 
tists, " to listen to the strongest views which any among us 
would care to utter; and they invite, if they do not chal- 
lenge, men of the most decided opinions to state and stand 
by those opinions in the o-pen court. No theory upsets 
them. Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated only 
in the language current among gentlemen, and they look it 
in the face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven aud 
the terrors of the other place ; smiting the theory, if they 
do not like it, with honest secular strength." ' Such I be- 
lieve to be the feeling of the best Christian ministers, at 
least in the present age. By continuing to cherish this 
spirit they will be kept from the mistakes of former times 
— the mistakes of a few men, not always clergymen, which 
have been made in such circumstances, and so thrust 
forward, that the whole church has had to bear the 
odium. 



INTRODUCTION. 21 

It is altogether unworthy of Christians at this Man's phy* 

» J ical nature 

day, be they clergymen or laymen, to be dis- gpec^fsub- 
turbed about the progress of science, or to ifation. Kev 
attempt to discredit it with denunciation and sneers. 
In regard to Darwinism, what force can stale jests 
about ancestral apes and tadpoles have, from those who 
confess to being, in their mortal make, brothers of the 
worm ? All in us that can perish was taken out of the same 
ground from which they came forth ; is no less dust than 
the reptile we bruise with our heel, and to the dust it shall 
return. We sow not that body that shall be. There is a 
natural body, and there is a spiritual body. Who knows 
but the researches of zoology may yet so enlighten our 
criticism and exegesis, that we can fearlessly say, speaking 
of that natural body, The writings of Moses do not fix 
the antiquity of man ; if they fix anything, it is only the 
time when, by the inbreathing of the spirit of God, he 
became an immortal and morally responsible being ? Then 
the discovery of lake-dwellings in Europe, and of human 
remains in ancient caves and geological formations, such 
as have been adduced by Lyell and others, will cease to 
hold any hostile attitude towards the Christian revelation. 
Certainly we shall not give up anything by taking the 
simple ground that the Scriptures were not meant to teach 
zoology, — to give us the natural history of a race which 
is crushed before the moth. Certainly we shall keep all 
that is essential to the integrity of our faith, by simply 
maintaining that the divine oracles are concerned with that 
spirit, made in the image of God, which is his child, and 
which, through disobedience, has fallen away from his 
fatherly embrace. Herein are the true glory and eternal 



22 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

peril of man. What science has to do with is vanity; it 
wastes away with the grass and flowers, and the places which 
Sn'ature"* knew it shall know it no more. That divine 
«n^nL likeness it was, not this frail tenement, which 

died in Adam ; which has lain dead in trespasses and sins, 
all through the long generations ; which is made alive in 
Christ, and which, living and believing in him, shall never 
die. We need have no fear of zoology while it stays 
within the range of natural law; we may but immortalize 
our own ignorance, and degrade our cause, by assaulting it 
in the name of Revelation ; it can never reach the truth 
of a spiritual creation, to which our consciousness testifies, 
and which is the citadel of the Christian faith ; and, by 
not disowning it, but throwing around it the warm atmos- 
phere of a brotherly interest and charity, we may save both 
it and ourselves. 

A spirit of 2. .In the second place, we may meet or fore- 
reform pre- " ' J 

dciity infi stall many religious errors of our times by own- 
ing all true charities and reforms about us as branches of 
the one great work committed to the Christian church. 
The rise and progress of not a few infidel tendencies, all 
along in Christian history, may be easily traced. There is, 
in almost every instance, a natural history of the revolt, 
which bears a striking lesson for us. Certain philanthrop- 
ical movements have begun in the church, or under its 
immediate notice. Where else did they ever begin ? The 
leading membership, perhaps also the ministry, watched 
Natural his- the new development with a disturbed feeling. 

tory of infi- , • 

del reforms. It jostled opinions they had long held, — so long 
as for that reason to believe them true. The rising charity 
or reform found its more ready advocates among the incon- 



INTRODUCTION. 23 

spicuous and less refined of the brethren. Might not those 
who seemed to be somewhat lose their prestige, and be- 
come followers or only equals where they had been wont 
to lead, if they gave place to the innovation ? That 
control which they had enjoyed till it seemed to them a 
natural right, depended on keeping all things as they were. 
There might be a Christian spirit in some of these philan- 
thropists, it was admitted ; possibly they were of that 
open-minded, unprejudiced class of men who, even in the 
time of Christ, welcomed truths which the learned would 
not receive. But they gradually acquired a habit of for- 
wardness in the church, wholly out of keeping with their 
former modesty ; and they had a blunt way of stating new 
views, out of season oftener than in season, which neither 
pleased delicate ears, nor became the place where all should 
be clone decently and in order. Under this strong temp- 
tation the damaging step was taken. That new enter- 
prise, the child of Christian impulse, was voted a mis- 
chievous intruder; was disowned, frowned upon, requested 
to take hself out of the way. The attempt was made to 
soothe the feelings of those who had thus been wounded, 
by assuring them that no doubt they were 4'ight in their 
motives. They were only a little too fast. It would be 
wiser in them to wait God's time, or till society should be 
ripe for their enterprise. This, however, so far from 
quenching the flame, was but adding fresh fuel to it. For, 
these aggrieved brethren justly argued, how is society 
ripened for any reform save by constant hearing of it ? or 
how does God make known his time, if not by laying a 
necessity on the hearts of his. people ? Such are the evil 
devices by which, in instances sadly numerous, the church 



24 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TKTJTH. 

has alienated her own children, and, like the god in pagan 

mythology, sought to devour them. 

infidelity But while the church has been displaying this 

welcomes m ° 

those whom centrifugal force within herself, there have risen, 

the church " 

repels. on the border-land between her and the world, 

certain rallying-points for these same discarded philan- 
thropies. There the disowned and ostracised brethren 
meet, tell the story of their persecutions at home, and form 
new alliances for the common advantage and safety. 
Shrewd observers, men of ability and ambition, who are 
seeking a constituency, and who bear the church no love, 
here begin to take up the injured cause. These leaders, 
going too far in their tirades against Christianity, repel the 
more devout or timid of their new followers, who flee 
back into the church from what they regard as a half-way 
house to infidelity. But though returning themselves, they 
do not bring with them the cause for which they went out. 
That stays among those with whom they found temporary 
refuge. Such is the way, briefly told, in which we are 
often furnished with that strange and monstrous spectacle, 
the work of the church ostensibly going forward under 
infidel auspices; Christ's enemies, apparently, saving him 
from his friends. If the good man had not been asleep, 
the spoiler had not broken up his house. People look on 
the outward appearance ; and the church has not avoided 
the appearance of evil, while these unbelievers seem to be 
carrying out the Saviour's express commands. 
The church Thus it is that the infidelity which might have 

not inno- - *" . 

cent. been forestalled, springs forth and thrives, We 

must confess, in looking over the history of the church, 
that Christians have many times abandoned their own 



INTRODUCTION. 25 

arsenals to their foes. Christianity has furnished to infi- 
dels the weapons with which they have assailed Chris- 
tianity. The enemy, watching for occasion against our 
cause, did not fail to strike when the occasion was given. 
Identifying the Bible with those who professed to be 
builded together on it, he could readily make it abhorrent 
to un discriminating minds. Did churchmen find aro-u- 
ments in the Bible in favor of systems of injustice? Did 
they quote its words on the side of slavery, as favoring 
the indulgence of appetite in strong drinks, against efforts 
of woman to improve her condition? This was just the 
opportunity which the wary adversary sought. He took 
their interpretation of the Book for the Book itself. Their 
commentary on divine truth was the war-club with which 
he assailed that truth. 

We who are Christian believers ought not to should avoid 
allow ourselves to be thus driven into a false tion. 
position. It is better to stay in the church, and bear 
much opposition from our own brethren, than yield up the 
sword of truth into the hands of the enemy. All real 
charities are the children of Christianity. Where they 
are we have a right to be, and ought to be. We may be 
suspected, avoided, and threatened for a time, by those 
who make their owji traditions the sole criterion of truth, 
but if we save these charities from falling iuto infidel 
hands, — if we keep them safely housed, folded within the 
fold of the Good Shepherd, breathing there a more con- 
genial atmosphere than they can find without, — our reward 
shall not be always wanting. Then religious error will 
have no chance to clothe itself in the garments of truth. 
We shall keep those garments where they belong. Then 



26 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

infidelity will not be able . to steal from us that charm 
which gives it its power. Then Christianity will not 
repel, but attract, those who are enlisted in any cause of 
good will to men. Then it will be seen with a clearness 
which none can gainsay, will shine forth with a brightness 
from which infidelity shall flee confounded, that faith in 
Christ, and the fellowship -of his gospel, are the way to all 
that is loving, or just, or kind between man and man. 
The church has only to be true to her divine Founder, 
walking in his own blessed footsteps of beneficence, and 
occupying all, the ground that is hers by the terms of her 
great commission, and infidelity, shut out upon the bleak 
and barren rock where it was born, will soon starve or 
freeze to death. 

Duty of the ^* ^ n ^ ne third place, those who are called 
pulpit. tQ preach t ] ie gospel can do much to prevent 

the growth of religious error, by compelling thoughtful 
persons to respect them as men of culture and power. I 
offer this remark partly as a balance to what has just been 
said. Whatever Christian ministers may do on the plane 
of common charity, they should strive to perform their 
especial work with a masterly hand. Hard study and 
thinking, which, after all, are the true secret of intellectual 
power, must nerve them daily, or their grasp on the better 
class of minds will be neither strong nor permanent. If 
Paul had wished to teach Timothy how to save men from 
infidelity, he could have written nothing better than the 
charge, "Let no man despise thee." It should be said, 
however, that the power of the pulpit, in this respect, does 
Consrega- not rest altogether with the ministry. Congre- 

tions must . 

co-operate, gations are largely responsible. JN ot all of them 



IXTEODUCTION. 27 

will bear, without restiveness, such a style of preaching as 
would satisfy more thoughtful listeners. Instead of mak- 
ing the preacher feel that he must exert himself to write 
up to their capacity, they are constantly tempting, and 
almost dragging him down to a lower level. They pack 
the house of God with a miscellaneous crowd, who come, 
not to be instructed, not to grapple with themes which tax 
the attention and reason, that their moral nature may- 
be profoundly and healthfully aroused, but who must be 
amused, and superficially excited in such a way as shall 
incline them to come again. The preacher's office is thus 
made a kind of advertising agency, in the interest of 
those who own the pews and pay the parish expenses. 
He cannot be a growing man, in any worthy sense ; nor is 
he allowed to practise, but must neglect, and gradually 
forget, those deeper investigations of truth which alone 
win the respect of the intelligent, and which all men need 
to have pressed on their attention, whether they think so 
or not. There should be an atmosphere of intellectual 
vigor around the minister, wdiich shall not only stimulate 
him, but compel the sluggish and ill-disciplined among his 
hearers to exert their latent powers. Thus alone can the 
weak be made strong, or the strong who are of the oppo- 
site party have any chance to be convinced. On this 
score, thanks to a faithful ministry and their earnest 
flocks, we find much to honor in the Puritan pulpit of 
New England. Wendell Phillips, the distinguished pop- 
ular orator, once confessed to a friend that Dr. Ifew Eno . 
Lyman Beecher taught him how to argue. In- tobe^oS? 
fidels went to hear Nathaniel Emmons preach, men e ' 
not because they liked his doctrines, but because, in the 



28 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

handling of them, he showed himself to be a master. 
Preachers of this stamp were wont to reason till their 
hearers trembled. Nor were those hearers repelled ; but, 
delighting in sermons which taxed their powers of thought, 
they were drawn, as by a spell, to the ever fresh displays 
of intellectual strength. Such preaching made its adver- 
saries ashamed, drew a charmed circle about those who 
'took pleasure in profound thinking and sound logic. They 
had no inducement to wander off after the teachers of 
scepticism. Their religious doubts were not a matter on 
which they set any great value, but, at the best, only 
secondary. What they craved, and must have, as what 
alone almost all doubters are ever earnest about, was 
mental food and quickening. They were not restive, nor 
was their sceptical bias strengthened. The germs of infi- 
delity in them could not grow, having nothing to feed upon, 
while they were held by this magic power of argument. 
Though they came to scoff, not unfrequently they left to 
pray, being awed into a respect which deepened to godly 
sorrow, faith, and repentance not to be repented of. A 
Effect of a jejune, slipshod style of thinking in the pulpit, 
weak pulpit, though careless heads like it, and fill the news- 
papers with praises of it, can never win these higher vic- 
tories. The same stale thoughts, however variously^ the 
changes be rung on them, and though they be set off with 
an odd text, many scraps of poetry, and humorous allu- 
sions, will not go down, Sabbath after Sabbath, with really 
sensible men. The multitude of those who desire simply 
to be put on good terms with themselves, may increase ; 
but another class, serious-minded though inclined to doubt, 
will scatter away into solitude, or where there is some 



INTRODUCTION. 29 

appearance of intellectual life. " These crudities and ex- 
travagances," say they, "are not what we come to the 
house of God for. Empty buckets, forever going into the 
well and fetching nothing up, do not meet our case. 
Whatever interest we may have in religious discussions, 
our time is valuable ; nor do we wish to put ourselves too 
much under the influence of such an intellectual standard, 
avoiding weak preachers just as we do weak books, lest 
our own standard of style and thought should be uncon- 
sciously lowered." Thus it is that some of the best minds, 
in search of a high culture, though doubtful respecting the 
Christian faith, are repelled till they quit the church to go 
where their minds shall at least get some sort of nutriment. 
Men thus repelled fall an easy prey to the Load j nr r j n fi_ 
higher forms of infidelity. They often become dels " 
leading propagators of religious error. Or if kept from 
this by some absorbing pursuit, their withdrawal from 
Christian relations tells against the truth, and serves to 
point the sneer of the open opposer. We are not to be 
servile imitators of those who triumphed in a past age. 
Very likely the style of preaching which prevailed then 
would be unsuited to the present times. We, How the ex- 

i"'(?iicv is to 

whom Christ is now calling to give the gospel be met. 
to men, should serve our own age as the faithful of other 
days served theirs. We need to be like them chiefly in 
knowing the habits of mind, the literature, the science, the 
theology amidst which we live; need to understand the 
present spirit and tone of all thinking, and catch the 
enthusiasm of our great forerunners, so as to meet error 
effectually and wield the truth with power. Therefore, 
beyond any collateral good which he may seek to accom- 



30 



HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 



plish, the preacher should strive to make men respect him 
in his sacred office. The overshadowing fact in his min- 
istry should be, not that he is active in the charities and 
philanthropies of his time, but that he brings home to 
men's hearts, with an honest strength which they can- 
not resist, the gospel of the Son of God. This must be 
his grand business, and no popular demand must hinder 
him from consecrating to it all his energies. Pastors of 
churches can show their sympathy with reforms without 
becoming pack-horses for all the societies which propose 
to aid or relieve somebody or something. They can show 
a tender interest in every parishioner, a good will towards 
the public enterprises of the day, love for their friends, a. 
kind regard for the sick, the sorrowing, the poor of the 
outlying districts, without becoming ministerial vagabonds. 
Let some one else do the canvassing for needy colleges 
and theological schools, for churches unable to pay their 
debts, and mission societies whose treasuries are empty. 
It is not reason, said the apostles at the time of Pen- 
tecost, that Christ's ministers should leave the word of 
God, and serve tables. Deacons are appointed to the 
offices of parochial charity — a fact which must be em- 
phasized, and made to cover as much ground as possible, 
or what chance can ministers have, in an age of great 
mental activity, to magnify their calling? They should be 
free to act upon their own deep conviction that they are 
nothing while they are not preachers of the gospel. This 
is the necessity which the Spirit, if he ever called them to 
their work, laid on them at the beginning. And woe unto 
them if they preach not the gospel ; if they do not so 
preach it as to make it respected ; so as to silence the 



INTRODUCTION. 31 

gainsayer; so as to hold sturdy thinkers firmly to the 
truth, giving them no occasion to wander from it, till they 
shall be convinced that it is the only bread which they 
can eat and never hunger. 

4. In the fourth place, Christ's followers may The spirit 

1 J of Christ in 

do much to prevent the rise and spread of infi- his people 

x A our main 

delity, by proving to men that their discipleship reliance. 
is not prompted by selfishness or self-seeking, but is purely 
a filling up of the blessed ministry to others which Christ 
began. Let it apjjear to the unbelieving that we are in 
nothing their beneficiaries, but in all things their benefac- 
tors. Christ said, " I am among you as one that serveth ; " 
and again, " I came not to .be ministered unto, but to min- 
ister." God reigns over the universe because he is love ; 
it is being the servant of all, as no other can be, that 
makes him Lord of all. In such royal and godlike ser- 
vice, according to the capacity given .us, is the hiding of 
our strength — the main secret of any ability we may 
hope for to make the truth mightier than error. "Do 
good, hoping for nothing again," is the sublime precept, 
" and ye shall be like your Father in heaven." 

As regards the ministry, though we who preach Duty of 

ministers. 

the gospel may live of the gospel, yet we should, 
like Paul, suffer loss rather than have our glorying made 
void. We should preach as debtors to all men, and not as 
those who look for a reward. It should be our boast that 
we have no hire but souls ; that the slight provision which 
we receive for present needs is not of the nature of pay, so 
much as an expression of gratitude on the part of those 
who contribute it; that our entire ministry is a witness 
to all men that we seek not theirs, but them. If left to 



32 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

suffer for this world's comforts, it is better to remember 
Him who had not where to lay his head, the Good Shep- 
herd who gave his life for the sheep, than to be suspected 
of any mercenary motive. When those who reap our 
spiritual things do not let us reap their temporal things, it 
is wiser to rebuke them manfully, or depart out of their 
city shaking the dust from our feet, if the privation can be 
no longer endured, than to be all the time breathing a 
spirit of complaint. That brooding discontent, if indulged, 
will gradually infect our whole ministry; and then the 
power and glory of our office will be gone. Rather than 
sink down into this state of mind, than have the sense of 
unrequited service grow to be a chronic disease, it would 
become us, like Christ and the apostles if need be, not to 
enter on our ministry till we have made provision for our 
temporal support ; to be able to cultivate a farm, deliver 
lectures, practise some handicraft, or have other means of 
supplying our few temporal wants, which shall stand us in 
stead when they that are taught forget to " communicate 
with" him that teacheth. It becomes the ministers of 
Christ to avoid, in all possible ways, the imputation that 
they are hirelings ; that their pastorates are simply their 
"livings;" that they follow their profession, just as all 
worldly men labor, for the sake of temporal wages. They 
must compel men to own that their ministry is indeed a 
discipleship of Him who, though rich, became poor that 
others through his poverty might be rich ; that it is pe- 
culiarly and sublimely a labor of love ; that this is its dis- 
tinctive trait, wherein no other calling or pursuit, in all the 
world, can be compared with it. 

But this devotion on the part of those who preach the 



INTRODUCTION. 33 

gospel is not enough. It may be made weak through 
the unfaithfulness of the great body of church-members. 
There have been ministers remarkable for their The whole 

• r» • mi • church must 

spirit of self-sacrifice in every age. Their co-operate, 
spirit of devotion was shorn of its power, however, be- 
cause it was seen to be an exception to the general life of 
the church. Whatever is exceptional, among persons of 
the same class and profession, is apt to be regarded as 
abnormal. The average life of the whole body is taken 
as the index of its real spirit. On this ground it is that 
infidels ascribe the zeal of such Christians as Henry Mar- 
tyn, David Brainercl, and Harlan Page, to religious fanat- 
icism. They see in it, not a proof of the transforming 
power of the gospel, but a sign of mental disorder. On 
the same ground the martyr-spirit of the apostles is attrib- 
uted to natural enthusiasm, awakened by the undue ex- 
citement of the religious imagination, and the life and 
death of Christ are said only to prove that he was the 
greatest of religious enthusiasts. This objection can be 
effectually answered only by a spirit of devotion pervading 
the church. There is a supernatural element in the 
Christian life, — a love of sacrifice and self-denial in doing 
good, — which cannot be accounted for by mere natural 
causes. But this element must appear in the great body 
of Christians, thus forcing men to see that it is in no case 
abnormal or exceptional, but a uniform result of faith in 
Christ Jesus, or the few good works which are done will 
not lead them to glorify our heavenly Father. There can 
be no qaestion, reasoning from the nature of the human 
mind as well as from history, that when the laity and 
clergy are one in this thing, every mouth of the gainsayers 
3 



34 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

will be stopped. All men will be forced to recognize the 
things which are not seen, and which are eternal, in order 
to account for the phenomena which the life of the church 
will present. This general union, in filling up what is be- 
hind of Christ's sufferings, will make it impossible for the 
world not to confess that he proceeded and came forth 
from the Father. 

Almost all our reliance, in meeting the doubts which 
scientific or speculative thinking may from time to time 
generate, must be on this leaven of sincerity and devotion 
to good works in the mass of Christ's followers ; a power 
which we shall. get only as we have Christ formed within 
us, and as we put on Christ day by day, so that the life 
which we live in the flesh shall be the life of God man- 
ifested through us. To reveal him is the sublime office of 
all those who make up the one visible church. If we 
cherish a friendly feeling towards the science and philos- 
ophy of our time, that favor should be for this supreme 
How the object. If we give our godspeed to every gen- 
Christts to ume charity, that sympathy should be for one 
be shown. an( j t k e same purpose. If Ave preach the doc- 
trines of the gospel thoroughly and with all our might, 
that faithfulness should have no less an end than to de- 
clare the Father's name. All our studying, all our toiling, 
all our self-sacrificing should be to show forth the excel- 
lency of Him who has called us ; to make men see that 
the gospel, reproduced in the lives of Christians, is the 
wisdom and power of God; to prove, by the all-loving 
spirit which animates us, that any form of unbelief which 
seeks to displace Christianity is a thief and a robber. 
Let the Christ-like spirit of all who believe, compel men to 



INTEODUCTIOK. 35 

see that infidelity is an imposture which bodes them only- 
evil ; that if admitted amongst them it would put cursing 
for blessing, darkness for light, corrupting selfishness for 
holy and heavenly charity.' If we choose to be identified 
with one school of theology rather than another, it should 
be clear to all that that. preference grows out of a higher 
consecration. Not as partisans, but the better to seek and 
save the lost, should we strive to organize the truths of 
the gospel into a compact doctrinal system. Why need 
we care what human name is stamped on our weapons, or 
from whose armory they came, if so be that they are of 
celestial temper, and we find them mighty through God 
to the pulling down of strongholds ? And any denomina- 
tional likes or dislikes which we may happen to have, 
should grow out of the same high aim as our other differ- 
ences. They should be our instrumentalities, not our 
ends ; chosen not for their own sake, but as the harness in 
which we can work most easily and effectually for Christ. 
In this view the variety of Christian denominations is a 
great advantage to the universal church. They are to be 
rejoiced in, so long as they do not usurp the place of the 
objects of the gospel, since they enable every believer, 
whatever his natural peculiarities, to find some place of 
service which shall be congenial to him. David can have 
his sling and stones, and Saul's mighty men their heavy 
armor; and thus Israel shall not divide, but greatly 
increase his strength against the hosts of the Philistines. 
Whether it be a question of theology, or of ecclesiastical 
polity, all should be free to choose under Christ, with the 
utmost charity and confidence towards each other. Souls 
hungering for the peace of God will be drawn to us by 
seeing that we have no party zeal, — no wish to build up 



36 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

this or that branch of the church for its own sake, or at 
the expense of some other branch, — but make it our 
supreme concern, through whatever special fellowship we 
may choose to be in, to save and bless mankind. 
This spirit Nothing but Christianity has ever given to 

peculiar to ° J a 

Christianity, the world such a service as this. There were 
faint foreshadowings of it in ancient times, and in some 
pagan lands men have shown a capacity for it, within 
certain narrow lines ; but to find another Jesus of Naz- 
areth, or another such mission of love as he founded, 
would be as impossible as to put another sun in the 
heavens. That kingdom of love and suffering, through 
the weakness of those to whom it has been committed, 
may at times have seemed untrue to its lofty tone and 
standard ; and thus doors may have been opened for the 
incoming of religious error ; yet under its broader aspects, 
and as judged by its acknowledged spirit, it has proved 
itself to be, all along through the Christian ages, the light 
and the life of men. And if we take up this kingdom in 
our turn, and carry it forward in the all-sacrificing spirit 
of the Lamb of God, any unbeliefs that may be lowering 
about us will swiftly disappear. It is the advancing sun 
that makes the snow and ice melt, the light shining in 
beauty that causes the darkness to flee away. Men will 
recoil from the arts of the infidel, in the presence of a 
church thus in earnest; and will hasten from him to be 
under its covert, instinctively choosing life rather than 
death, that which quickens rather than that which chills 
and dwarfs their noblest powers. They will turn to it as 
the imprisoned plant turns to the window ; they will flock 
to it as birds fly from winter to a warmer and brighter 
clime. 



PANTHEISM. 



(37) 



LECTURE I. 

Spinoza, and other Masters. 
On the 22d day of February, 1677, in a a singular 

death bed 

small hired chamber at the Hague, while the scene. 
owners of the humble dwelling were at church, it being 
Sunday, a physician, having seen the tenant of that lonely 
room heave his last breath, and hastening to depart, took 
to himself a little money and a silver-handled knife, which 
lay on the table near the dead man's body, fearing that he 
might receive no other fee for his medical services. 1 The 
man whose lifeless remains were thus deserted, to await 
the return of his simple host and hostess, was Benedict 
Spinoza. Not wishing to withhold from him any honor 
which is justly his due, but choosing that he should be over- 
praised rather than disparaged, I am willing to accept as 
historically true, all that his most ardent disciples or friends 
have said of him. The eulogistic account of Mr. Lewes, 
in his Biographical History of Philosophy, 2 shall be given, 

1 Accounts of the death of Spinoza, as of various events in his life, do not 
agree. Willis (Life, Correspondence and Ethics of Spinoza, London, 1870) 
differs from Lewes, whom I have chiefly consulted. Colerus, pastor of the 
Lutheran church at the Hague, who greatly admired Spinoza, and took pains 
to gather up all the local memories of him, is their principal authority; though 
they do not hesitate to question his veracity (especially Willis) when it conflicts 
with their own prejudices. 

2 Appleton & Co., New York, 1857, pp. 456-469. 

39 



40 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

so far as my space will permit, with no tittle of abatement 
from its full meaning. 

Spinoza's According to this writer, Spinoza died at the 

?ig r ious S refu- meridian of his manhood, being but forty-four 
years and three months old. He was of Jewish 
parentage, and his father and mother resided in Amsterdam 
at the time of his birth. They had but recently come to 
this city of free Holland, escaping thither from their home 
in Portugal, where intolerance of the Jews would not suffer 
them to live. Their flight, it thus seems, was nearly in 
the same age, and for the same reasons, as that of the Pil- 
grim Fathers from England. They sought an asylum from 
religious oppression. This is a circumstance which should 
be noted, in sketching the life of Spinoza. If he had 
known Christianity as anything but a persecuting power, 
he might, upon renouncing Judaism, have embraced some- 
thing better, possibly, than the dream which he himself 
dreamed in his solitude. But for this hereditary prejudice 
and hatred, which we all can understand, he might have 
made the choice of a Paul or a Neander. He seems, how- 
ever, when he forsook the national faith, to have seen no 
alternative but to invent a religion of his own. 
His child- Benedict, or Baruch, as he was called before 

hood. k e forsook the religion of his people, is described 

as a remarkably active boy, though lacking in physical 
robustness ; fond of playing, with his sisters Miriam and 
Rebecca, about the squares and wharfs of the city. He 
was remarkable for his "bright, quick, and penetrative" 
eyes ; and for his dark hair, which floated in " luxuriant 
curls over his neck and shoulders." His father is repre- 
sented as a successful merchant, who hoped that this only 



PANTHEISM. 41 

son would choose the same occupation. But a passion for 
study which showed itself very early, together with a 
slender constitution, daily growing more slender through 
devotion to books and meditation, induced the 

His studies. 

parent to change his purpose. The beloved son, 
already " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," was 
allowed to enter upon a course of the higher Hebrew 
learning. He gave himself to his studies with the greatest 
enthusiasm, and with astonishing success ; so that when 
he was only fourteen years old, hardly a doctor or rabbi, in 
the whole country, surpassed him in amount and accuracy 
of knowledge. Very high hopes were entertained of him, 
among adherents to the Jewish faith. His teacher, Saul 
Levi Morteira, a zealous Israelite, looked on him with feel- 
ings of pride and admiration. We may easily judge, 
therefore, how great were the disappointment and alarm of 
his friends, when they found him pushing his inquiries 
beyond the limits of the Old Testament and the Talmud, 
scattering the arguments of the rabbis with Hisdefec- 
his nimble logic, and proposing to them a mul- tlon * 
titude of very plain questions w^hich they saw it to be for 
their interest not to attempt to answer. Two young men, 
nearly of his own age, are mentioned as courting his inti- 
macy at this time, 1 and urging him to divulge his opinions, 
under a pretence of discipleship ; though, as he suspected, 
with the purpose of betraying him to the Jewish elders. 
He was so reticent to these young men respecting his new 
views, that whatever they may have at first designed, they 
took offence at his reserve, and reported him as one who was 
secretly undermining the ancient faith. Straightway he 

i Willis, pp. 31, 32. 



42 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

was summoned before the leaders of the synagogue, whose 
minds were already beginning to turn against him. This 
peremptory demand made him feel, no doubt, the great 
inconsistency of his people, in refusing him the freedom of 
opinion which they had gone into exile to secure. He 
appeared, however, in answer to the requirement; and 
that, too, so promptly and willingly as to raise strong hopes, 
among his relatives and friends, that he would deny or 
retract the opinions which had been charged 

His trial. . . . . 

against him. Yet m all this he was consistent 
with himself. Though he would not have his sentiments 
drawn out of him and stated in court by others, he shrank 
not from the opportunity thus to state them with his own 
voice and in his own language. He therefore eagerly 
obeyed the summons. He gave a frank account of his 
heresies to the proper tribunal. His bearing was so easy, 
and without apparent concern for himself, in the presence 
of his judges, as to amount to a kind of " gay carelessness," 
says one writer. He refused to take back what he had 
now asserted openly, unless he should be convinced of his 
error by sound argument. He defiantly but coolly con- 
fronted the accusers who appeared against him ; and when 
his judges threatened him with excommunication for his 
obstinacy, though he answered them respectfully, there 

was something in. his voice and manner which 

His conduct. •. 

betrayed a deep contempt lor both their omce 
and themselves. His old tedcher Morteira, grieved that 
his brilliant pupil should be lost to Israel, pleaded and 
kindly remonstrated ; but these failing, he, too, joined in 
the attempt to overawe the heretic. But threats had no 
power to intimidate the youthful thinker. From whatever 



PANTHEISM. 43 

source coming, so long as he saw no reason in them they 
only awakened his proud disdain. His was one of those 
natures, often found in feeble bodies, which are incapable 
of fear. The more he was threatened the less disposed 
was he to be terrified ; and when it was finally resolved to 
cut him oiF from the Jewish church, in the awful manner 
which the rules of the synagogue prescribed, it is said that 
he anticipated the sentence by publicly declaring himself 
no longer a Jew in faith. That sentence, read forth at 
night in the synagogue, amid doleful wailings, His! excom . 
and under lights which went out one by one mumcatlou - 
till they left the congregation in utter darkness, was as 
follows : " With the judgment of the angels, and the sen- 
tence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse, and 
cast out B'aruch de Spinoza, the whole of the sacred com- 
munity assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the 
six hundred and thirteen precepts written therein, pro- 
nouncing against him the anathema wherewith Joshua 
anathematized Jericho, the malediction wherewith Elisha 
cursed the children, and all the maledictions written in the 
book of the law. Let him be accursed by day, and ac- 
cursed by night ; let him be accursed in his lying down, and 
accursed in his rising up, accursed in going out, and accursed 
in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowl- 
edge him ; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord 
burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the 
curses written in the book of the law, and raze out his 
name from under the sky; may the Lord sever him for 
evil from all the tribes of Israel, weight him with all the 
maledictions of the firmament contained in the book of 



44 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TETTTH. 

the law, and may all ye who are obedient to the Lord your 
God be saved this day." 1 

It may be proper to add that the health of 

A fugitive. 

Spinoza did not fail, as soon as this dreadful 
ceremony was over ; and that he lived nearly twenty years 
after it, quite as long as his poor body ever promised to 
last, during which years he seems to have fully carried 
out his one great purpose. But that malediction, like 
similar ones from the Head of the Romish church at dif- 
ferent times, was not altogether an idle thunderbolt. So 
greatly enraged were his old associates and friends at his 
withdrawal from them previous to this sentence, thus 
showing an open contempt not only for their worship but 
for their power to curse him, that his life was not safe. 
Forgetting the words of the frightful sentence, which for- 
bade them to come "within four cubits' length " of him, 
they waylaid him, with evil intent, in his nightly walks ; 
and on one occasion, at least, the assassin's knife would 
have entered his neck, had he not dexterously avoided its 
thrust. Regard for his personal safety now compelled him 
to keep away from his former haunts. His own kindred 
even sought him but to do him harm. For the sake of 
their good standing with the synagogue, no doubt with 
true Hebrew vengeance also, they had publicly disowned 
him, and wrathfully denounced him. He wandered about 
in places where he was not known, unable to tell what 
death might befall him any moment ; and though scorning 
it v yet menaced by the cloud of curses which hung over 
him. But he was not at all moved from his deeper plans, 
during the years that he led this uncertain life. He went 

i Willis, pp. 34, 35. 



PANTHEISM. 45 

straightway to a physician in Amsterdam, Yan den Ende 

by name, who was a tutor in the Latin tongue.. 

, -. ! n At school. 

This language was the key to the philosophy ot 

the time, and the medium of intercourse among learned 
men. The Hebrew religion had forbidden Spinoza, as it 
did all Israelites, to know* this language ; yet he seems 
to have already had considerable acquaintance with it, 
nevertheless. His object, in seeking Van den Ende, may 
have been to perfect himself in this, and in the Greek 
tongue ; and also, as Willis thinks, to earn a pittance by 
aiding his tutor with other pupils. Another fact associated 
with this school greatly interests us, since it is one of the 
few proofs we have that there was to Spinoza's nature a 
deeply tender and susceptible side. Though almost noth- 
ing of an emotional nature can be found in his published 
writings, I suspect that no man ever felt more keenly or 
profoundly, on all those matters which most stir the hu- 
man heart. It seems that his new professor had a daugh- 
ter, as skilled as her sire in the speech of the Roman 
maidens ; and that to her tuition this young Benedict was 
in some way assigned. However this may have 
been, it is at least certain that he came, most 
silently and deliciously, to be in love with his fair asso- 
ciate. Yet, with a true and knightly sense of honor, he 
kept his affection secret, waiting for the time when his 
prospects should be more settled. That time having 
come, and the young lady having had full opportunity to 
learn his character and peculiar religious views, he ven- 
tured to hint to her the state of his feelings and his hopes. 
But he met no encouragement. Had he been a member 
of the Papal church, a man of wealth, and a favorite in 



46 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

gay society, she might not have objected. As it was, 
however, she preferred to cast in her lot with a young 
Hamburg merchant, who had the means of gratifying all 
her wishes for show and idle luxury. Spinoza was grieved 
to find that he had been offering his honorable heart to 
such vanity ; he was astonished at himself, that he could 
have felt so much interest in so much selfishness and du- 
plicity ; and taking home the severe lesson, thankful that 
he had pressed his suit no farther, he turned away forever 
from love to philosophy. His susceptible nature seemed 
to be utterly driven in upon itself. Perhaps there never 
was a more absolute consecration to the search for truth, 
with the single fault that it was, at all events, to be a 
search made in his own strength ; the trustworthiness of 
his individual intellect was not to be questioned. Dis- 
owned of kindred, his tenderness rebuffed in the first 
effort to speak it, he cheerfully accepted his lot; and he 
undertook the mighty riddle which was closing about 
him, with no faith in any wisdom but his own. 
His purpose -^ Spinoza now asked, whether of friend or 
formed. f oe ^ wag ^ Q -^ e p erm itted to. live. And of this 
he was pretty sure while he kept out of the way ; for his 
wants were very few, and he had learned the art of polish- 
ing lenses for optical instruments, by which he earned small 
sums of money from • time to time. Leibnitz praised him 
for his skill in this art, writing, in a letter to the young 
truth-seeker, "Among the honorable things which fame 
has acquainted me with concerning you, I learn with no 
small interest that you are a clever optician." Spinoza 
was now, as he felt, fully able to provide for himself in the 
world. Independent and satisfied, determined to push his 



PAXTHEISM. 47 

inquiries boldly on all sides, he was careless of what any 
critic might say about him, and sure of supplying his few 
bodily needs from the earnings of spare hours. It was an 
instance of self-confidence hardly paralleled in the history 
of thinking, and which commands our admiration at least, 
when that student, only about twenty-five years old, de- 
parted from his native city scarcely knowing whither he 
went, and caring for nothing but to push the investigations 
of which he had taken hold. On the road between Am- 
sterdam and Auwerkerke he found his first asylum, in a 
house which is said to be still standing, situated on what 
is called, in memory of the great thinker, Spinoza Lane. 1 
From this retreat he went, after about five years, to reside 
in Rhynsburg ; whence he again removed, some four years 
later, till finally he took lodgings in an obscure house at 
the Hague. 

The fame of Descartes was at its zenith, dur- Rea d's Des- 
ing these years of Spinoza's life, the great ideal- 
ist having been dead but a few years, and his enthusiastic 
disciples having installed his philosophy as a chief author- 
ity in the best schools of learning throughout Europe. 
To his works Spinoza at once turned, studying them 
with intense ardor, but subjecting every statement to 
the tests of his own consciousness and logic. Accepting 
the main premise, and the method of this master, he 
yet found much to disagree with in the structure of 
Cartesianism. The result of these studies was his first 
work, published at Amsterdam in 1663, entitled The 
Principles of the Philosophy of Rene des Cartes demon- 
strated by the geometrical method ; to which are added 

i Willis. 



48 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Metaphysical Thoughts, by Benedict Spinoza. 1 The 
Thoughts, thus appended to his exposition of Descartes, 
contained the germs of his system of pantheism. His 
great work on Ethics, written subsequently, and not pub- 
lished till after his death, and in which. we have the final 
embodiment of his philosophical views, grew out of this 
beginning. Such utterances, as we might readily infer, 
gave no little offence to the multitude of Cartesians ; and 
their deep hostility was shown, at times, in ways more 
pointed than becoming. They abhorred the conclusions 
of Spinoza ; and to see him grafting his system upon that 
of their adored master, was more than philosophy could 
bear. To add to their vexation they beheld the book of 
the new expounder and critic in the hands of almost every 
young student. Spinoza, though cast out from society, 
and exposed to death all the while, had yet succeeded in 
making for himself many admirers. All curious minds, 
whatever they might think of his religious leanings, were 
charmed by the boldness and novelty of his speculations. 
Partly that he might the better command his time, and 
partly to be out of the way of his implacable foes, he 
withdrew at length into his little room at the Hague, 
where fifteen years later a consumption, the seeds of 
which he had inherited, put an end to his solitary life. 
Here he exhibited many traits of character which reveal 
the true philosopher and claim our honest admiration. 
Characteris- ^ s unselfishness in common things was won- 
tl0S ' derful. An estate fell to him at his father's 

death, which his sisters denied his right to inherit, on 
account of his apostasy from the Hebrew faith. He there- 

i Willis, p. 47. 



PANTHEISM. 49 

fore first established his right in the civil courts,- and then 
gave the whole estate to the sisters, to be divided betweeir 
them. Self-possession and bravery were natural to him. 
On one occasion he was summoned away from his cham- 
ber by the great Conde, then in Holland with a French 
army. For this act he was suspected of some secret sym- 
pathy with the enemies of his country; and upon his 
return, an infuriated mob was speedily gathered about his 
lodgings. The owner of the house, dreading the ruin 
which threatened him, entreated Spinoza to take himself 
out of the way as quickly as possible. " Fear nothing," 
was the quiet reply; "I will go out and meet them." 
Accordingly, instead of running away and hiding, he did 
go out, greatly to the relief of his host ; and the mob, 
overawed by his calm and fearless demeanor, stole away 
from him, afraid to touch a hair of his head. He scorned 
the least overreaching or unfair dealing. Being asked 
once to take the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg, he 
declined ; for he knew that the theology there taught, if it 
did not give way, would soon bring him into open conflict 
with his associates. He would not even make converts to 
his own views at the expense of the orthodox party. 
Nor was he less independent than magnanimous. He 
would not put himself in the way of temptation, which 
might lead him to change his views, or become the tool of 
another man. He was offered a pension, if he would en- 
gage to dedicate his next work to Louis XIV. But he 
proudly refused, saying that he had " no intention of ded- 
icating anything to that monarch." Such was the favor 
that sought him, and his way of meeting it ; and that, too, 
while his poverty was all the time extreme. One day he 
4 



50 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

would have no food but a dish of soup costing 

His poverty. 

three halfpence, and a pot of beer worth three 
farthings. Another day he would be content with "a 
basin of gruel, with some butter and raisins, which cost 
him twopence halfpenny." "And," says pastor Colerus, 
who gathered these facts about Spinoza while occupying 
the same lodgings which had been the philosopher's, 
"although often invited to dinrier, he preferred the scanty 
meal that he found at home, to dining sumptuously at the 
expense of another." 1 

It is said that in all his lifetime, after coming 

His patience. 

to years of discretion, he was never heard to 
murmur or complain. Silent, thoughtful, smiling, ever 
patient and ever toiling, he lived on in his solitary cham- 
ber. Nor was he too poor to indulge the kindliness of his 
nature now and then, by giving away something for the 
relief of the destitute. The mistress of the house in 
which he lodged was, together with her husband, a firm 
believer in the Christian religion; and when she came to 
him, as she repeatedly did, asking him to explain his reli- 
gious views, so that she mi^ht know them and 

Histoler- ° ° 

auce - judge for herself, he mildly parried her request, 

urging her to be content with her present faith. "Your 
religion is a good religion," said he ; " you have no occa- 
sion to look after another; neither need you doubt of 
your eternal welfare so as, along with your pious observ- 
ances, you continue to lead a life of peace in charity with 
all." 2 It will be seen here that Spinoza, according to the 
doctrine of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, places reli- 
gion in outward forms chiefly, which one-may adopt or lay 

i See Lewes. 2 Willis, p. 5G. 



PAXTHEISM. 51 

aside at pleasure, his real character being a thing which 
they do not affect in any case. This extreme tolerance, 
and making man's eternal safety depend on the common 
moral virtues, is significant. It shows the small practical 
value which Spinoza attached to his own, or to any, con- 
clusions of the intellect. All that is necessary in every 
case, as he seems to teach, is, that one's views be purely 
his own; not learned from any other person, but reached 
by an independent course of study. This, certainly, is a 
tolerance so large, that to see wherein it is not simply 
indifference to truth, must be hard for most minds. 
Imagine Jesus of Nazareth, at the well in Samaria, telling 
the woman who asked him about his religion, to be con- 
tent with the faith in which she had been brought up ! It 
is the tendency of a great truth, when one has embraced 
it, to make him a missionary. Just in proportion as he 
values it he feels bound to proclaim it, and to bring other 
men into it. We see this inspiration of truth nobly 
shown in the martyr, changed to a demon in the persecutor, 
manifested with heavenly beauty in Him who went about 
teaching among the villages of Galilee. 

Does not this want of moral earnestness in Spinoza 
indicate that he studied and wrote not to instruct, so 
much as to please himself and puzzle mankind ? The 
supposition that he found a certain secret enjoyment in 
confusing men's thoughts and bewildering them with his 
subtle paradoxes, would fall in with some of His easy 
his well-known habits. " His only relaxations," events, 
says Mr. Lewes, " were his pipe, receiving visitors, chat- 
ting to the people of his house, and watching spiders 
fight. This last amusement would make the tears roll 



52 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

down his cheek with laughter." Willis, noticing the fact 
about the spiders, is anxious to prevent the suspicion of a 
wanton cruelty which it tends to awaken; and he .sug- 
gests that it was not the battles, but the loves of the ven-. 
omous insects, which so greatly amused the philosopher. 
The tradition that Spinoza kept a colony of spiders in his 
room, and that he fed them with flies, after the manner of 
the Roman theatre, where Christians were thrown to the 
lions, cannot be thus explained away. This pastime 
seems to have afforded quite as much pleasure as the 
other. Mr. Willis may discredit it, and Lewes pass it by 
silently ; but a more sensitive writer has said, " I could 
never understand the mirth, the ' laughter ' which Spinoza 
is said to have indulged in, when witnessing the contest 
between the spider and the fly. I can comprehend that 
so abstract a philosopher would, have risen above our nat- 
ural repugnance, and surveyed even calmly an instance of 
a general and a wise law of nature, — life surrendered to 
support other and generally higher life, — but why should 
the death of the poor fly have occasioned laughter?" 1 
The disturbed author would have hardly started this 
query, had he duly considered what was the essence of 
Spinoza's doctrine. He should have known that the "ab- 
stract philosopher" was entirely consistent with his the- 
ory, in laughing at the struggles of the victim ; for the 
grand lesson which his whole system impresses is, the 
right of power to triumph over weakness. 

vagueness Thus lived and died Benedict Spinoza, the 

writers. father of Modern Pantheism. Perhaps it would 

not be far out of the way to say that he was the 

1 Thorndale. 



PANTHEISM. 53 

father of all pantheism, if we mean by that term only 
such systems, of the same nature as his, as have a logical 
completeness and have been clearly reported to us. The 
signs of agreement with him which we find in ancient 
thought are often more or less vague and uncertain. As 
there were reformers before the Reformation, so there may 
have been Spinozists before Spinoza. There is at least a 
pantheistic flavor, in some parts of ancient philosophy, 
which demands our attention ; but the result, at the best, 
does not promise to be such as would repay an exhaustive 
treatment. There are, in the New Testament, words and 
phrases which a pantheist might use. Yet no candid 
scholar would affirm that pantheism is meant, where we 
read that "Christ is all and in all," that "whosoever is 
joined unto the Lord is one spirit," that "the Father 
dwelleth in us and we in him." If we use an exegesis 
which saves such passages as these from pantheism, which 
condemns nothing in the Fourth Gospel, nothing in the 
Epistles of Paul, nothing in the words of Christ himself, 
to that category, why not make a similar allowance in the 
study of uninspired writers? Indeed, there are modern 
writers, both of prose and poetry, who have spoken here 
and there in the forms of pantheism, yet whose words 
spoken in other places make it certain that the universe 
and God were not to them one and the same thing. Take, 
for instance, the lines of Pope, in his Essay on Man : — 

" All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul.. 
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
Great in the earth as in the ethereal frame. 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 



54 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent, 
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
As full, as perfect in a hair as heart ; 
To him no high, no low, no great, no small; 
He tills, he bounds, connects, and equals all." 

If such language as this may be corrected, in the light 
of other expressions by the same author, so as to leave 
him still a believer in the essential truths of Christianity, 
we certainly may suppose that at least some of the ancient 
authors, from whom pantheistic fragments only have come 
down, spoke other words, now lost, without which they 
cannot be fairly judged. I do not deny that some of them 
were clear and thorough-going pantheists ; but the opinion 
of those best able to form a judgment in the case, has for 
years been inclining to. the view, that not a little of what 
was once loosely called the pantheism of the ancients, was 
the more or less vague tradition of a primeval monotheism. 
In rejecting the many gods of paganism, and insisting on 
the divine unity, of which dim remembrances had been 
handed on to them, they may have used terms which we 
falsely regard as anticipating the theory of Spinoza. 

One of the first movements in religious phi- 

The Alex- . . . 

andriiin losophy which here attracts our notice, is the 

masters. 

Neo-Platonism of Alexandria. Perhaps we 
ought not to feel any hesitation in charging pantheism 
upon the teachers of that famous school. For we find them 
holding such language as this : " God is the only existence ; 
he is the real existence, of which we, and other things, are 
but transitory phenomena." The greatest of the Alexan- 
drine masters was Plotinus, who went to Rome, 

riotiuus. 

and founded a school there, where he had among 



PANTHEISM. 55 

his pupils the celebrated Porphyry. He died towards the 
close of the third century of our era. The following is 
from him : " How doth wisdom differ from that which is 
called nature ? Verily in this manner, that wisdom is the 
first thing, but nature the least and lowest ; for nature is 
but an imitation or image of wisdom, the last thing of the 
soul, which hath the lowest impress of wisdom shining 
upon it; as when a thick piece of wax is thoroughly im- 
pressed on a seal, that impress, which is clear and distinct 
in the superior superficies of it, will in the lower side be 
weak and obscure ; and such is the stam]? and signature 
of nature ; compared with that of wisdom and under- 
standing, nature is a thing which doth only do, but not 
know." * Thus did he seem to identify the essence of 
nature with that of intelligence ; and this latter he appears 
to have held as one with the Godhead ; for even in the 
agonies of death he exclaimed, " I am struggling to liberate 
the divinity within me." He wrote . two books to prove 
that all being is one and the same ; and the reason which 
he gave for not sacrificing to the gods was, that it became 
the gods, since he too was divine, to sacrifice to him. 
Views essentially the same as those of Plotinus, were 
taught bv his successor Iamblichus at Alexan- 

Iamblichus. 

dria ; and as late as the year 529, at Athens, by 

Proclus and those who followed him in the school of that 

city. For a more full account of these masters 

Proclus. 

and their philosophy than can be given here, the 

work of Butler may be consulted. 2 " It is the perpetual 

i Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe, Vol. I., p. 240. 
2 Ancient philosophy, by William Archer Butler (Philadelphia, 1857), Vol. 
II., pp. 320-335. 



56 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

lesson of Plotinus," says Butler, " that the object of reason 
is not, cannot be, external to reason ; that truth is not in 
the conformity of thoughts with things, but of thoughts 
with each other. Intelligence is at once the object con- 
ceived, the subject conceiving, and the act of conception. 
To rest on self is, to commune with the universe." In his 
theory of knowledge, and of the world, which he held to 
be an efflux of the divine substance, the teaching of Ploti- 
nus is such as to give the impression that he anticipated 
the doctrine of Spinoza. 

This notice of the Alexandrine school brings 
Plato. m ■ m & 

us, by association, to Plato himself, from whom 
they claimed to derive the germs of their system. Butler 
says that Proclus " found in Plato all he. wished to find ; " 
and that "the dreamy theories of Alexandria were not 
unnatural results of certain tendencies discoverable in the 
writings of Plato himself — tendencies for which his own 
well-balanced intellect, doubtless, provided sufficient coun- 
terpoise, but which too closely suited peculiar tempera- 
ments not to have been soon exalted into exclusive or 
predominant principles of speculation." x Plato seems to 
have tried to mediate between the empiricists of his day 
and pure rationalists of the Eleatic school ; yet the tran- 
scendental element in his writings is that which most power- 
fully affected his followers, and which was especially laid 
hold of by the Alexandrine teachers. They treated him 
" very much as Philo treated Moses ; " very much as some 
of the Christian fathers, trained at Alexandria, treated the 
New Testament writings. Whatever we find among the 
Neo-Platonists, therefore, we can trace back to Plato only 

1 Ancient Philosophy, Vol. II., p. 55. 



PANTHEISM. 57 

in some such sense as the Alexandrine Jew might trace it 
to the writings of Moses, or the Neo-Platonic Christian to 
the words of Christ and the apostles. 

Even in Aristotle there are statements which 

Aristotle. 

have a pantheistic look, though his genius was 
of the empirical cast. In his treatise on psychology, he 
seems to regard the soul as a principle pervading nature, 
which exists in the plants and animals no less than in the 
philosopher. Dr. South says he taught, "that there was 
one universal soul belonging to the whole species or race 
of mankind, and indeed to all things according to their 
capacity ; which universal soul, by its respective existence 
in, and communication of itself to each particular man, 
did exert in him those noble acts of ratiocination and un- 
derstanding proper to his nature ; and those also in a 
different degree and measure of perfection, according as 
the different disposition of the organs of the body made it 
more or less fit to receive the communication of that uni- 
versal soul ; which soul only he held to be immortal, and 
that each particular man, both in respect of body and 
spirit, was mortal." We must perhaps accept this as mo- 
nism ; though, clearly enough, it anticipates the science of 
the Comtian school, rather than the metaphysics of Spinoza. 
Other expressions of Aristotle would indicate to us that it 
ought not to be interpreted too rigidly ; and, even admit- 
ting that Dr. South caught the proper force of his words, 
they may have been simply his strong expression of dissent 
from the polytheism of the times. 

Earlier than the age of Plato and Aristotle v . 

o Xenopnanes 

lived Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic theEleatic - 
school of philosophy. He, according to Grote, "con- 



58 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ceived nature as one unchangeable and indivisible whole, 
spherical, animated, endued with reason, and penetrated 
by, or indeed identical with God : he denied the objective 
reality of all changes, or generation, or destruction, which 
he seems to have considered as only changes or modifica- 
tions in the percipient, and perhaps different in one per- 
cipient and another." The Eleatics may have been 
pantheists ; yet we should bear in mind that this language 
is not theirs, so much as Grote's commentary on the 
teachings of their founder. The same may be remarked 
of Heraclitus, a pupil of Xenophanes, who was 

Heraclitus. ' i r i J 

called "the weeping philosopher," and in whose 
teachings Hegel claimed to find the germs of Hegelianism. 
The decisive question in regard to him, as in regard to 
many others both before and after him, — a question im- 
possible to answer, — is this : Had he any clear knowledge 
of the one living and true God ? If not, his utterances about 
the Divine Reason, and the One, are very probably pan- 
theistic. But if he had such knowledge, those same utter- 
ances may indicate a more or less pure monotheism. Py- 
thagoras, who lived in the fifth century before 

Pythagoras. ° . 

Christ, agreed apparently with the two thinkers 
last named ; though his method is peculiar. " Numbers," 
said he, " are the cause of the material existence of things." 
In the development of this theory of numbers, we find 
traces of what has been commonly held to be pantheism ; 
for he represents all things as the forthputtings of one 
eternal unit, held together by its underlying and pervasive 
power, and returning constantly by absorption into it. 
The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is associated with 
his name, seems to have grown out of this general theory, 



PANTHEISM. 59 

as also perhaps the peculiar discipline which he established 
among his pupils. He was distinguished in his day for 
the honor he rendered to woman. His wife is said to have 
been as devoted as himself in the search for truth ; and 
many of the noblest women of Greece were among his schol- 
ars, — in connection with which fact it should be remarked, 
however, that he required each one of his pupils, upon 
entering the school, to take a vow of silence for five years. 
There was a school of philosophers in ancient H i OZO ists 
Greece, known as Hylozoists, in distinction and othei ' s - 
from the Atomists, whose speculations have a decidedly 
pantheistic flavor. Strato Lampsacenus was a master in 
this school, and is represented by Cudworth as the teacher 
of a certain crude pantheism. " Strato's deity," says he, 
" was a certain living and active, but senseless nature. He 
did not fetch the original of all things, as the Democritic 
and Epicurean atheists, from a mere fortuitous motion of 
atoms, by means whereof he bore some slight resemblance 
of a theist ; but yet he was a downright atheist for all 
that, his god being no other than such a life o£ nature or 
matter as was both devoid of sense and consciousness, 
and also multiplied together with the several jDarts of it." x 
Coleridge was no doubt right in saying that " pantheism 
was taught in the mysteries of Greece." Yet it is hardly 
fair to study those ancient systems, as too many critics seem 
to have done, with the foregone conclusion, that so far as 
they were not polytheistic they were pantheistic. The pre- 
supposition of pure monotheism would explain certain por- 
tions of them just as well. Men who think, and who find 
their data in consciousness, are exposed to pantheism when 

i Intellectual System, Vol. I., pp. 149, 150. 



60 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

they forsake the true God ; and this is enough to establish 
the fact that many of the Greek philosophers, though we dare 
not say precisely which ones, were forerunners of Spinoza. 
The (Men ^ ^ e contemplative Orientals it is far more 

tals - true than of the Greeks, that, in their ignorance 

of the true God, they inclined to pantheism. We find in 
the East a philosophy of the senses, quite as earnest as 
that of Democritus or Epicurus, and resulting in a vast 
system of Positivism ; but the main current of thought 
there seems always to have set more naturally towards 
Spinozism. The ancient Hindoos, if we may trust Sir 
William Jones, "believed that the whole creation is an 
energy rather than a work, by which the infinite mind, is. 
present at all times and in all places, and exhibits to his 
creatures a set of perceptions, like a wonderful picture or 
piece of music always varied but always uniform." Here 
we have laid open the secret of the Brahmanical emana- 
tions, the source of the pleroma and eons of the Gnostics, 
the origin of nearly all that is most profound in Oriental 
religion an^ philosophy. There are many things also, in 
the writings of the ancient Egyptians, which 
speculation. seem ^o anticipate the teachings of modern 
pantheism. The inscription on the veiled image at Sais, 
" I am all that was, is, and shall be, and my veil no mortal 
could ever uplift," may have been the utterance of a pan- 
theistic creed ; as also the following words, taken by Cud- 
worth from the Trismegistic or Hermaic books : " He 
(God) is both incorporeal and omnicorporeal ; for there is 
nothing of any body which he is not ; he is all things that 
are, and therefore he hath all names ; because all things 
are from one father ; and therefore he hath no name, be- 



PANTHEISM. 61 

cause he is the father of all things." 1 Such passages 
abound in the sacred books of the Egyptians; but to 
search them out, and discriminate between those which 
teach pantheism and those which teach a primitive mon- 
otheism, would be a wearisome, if it were a possible, task. 

Recent researches have shown, however, that Prjmitive 
not all of those old speculations were mere fore- moaotheism - 
shadowings of Spinozism; that some of them, at least, 
are worthy to be jput in a nobler category; that they 
may have been, and probably were, instances of a more 
or less pure monotheism. The study of language and 
mythology, pursued with such eagerness by certain Ger- 
man and French scholars, has nearly demonstrated that 
there was, far away beyond the ages of polytheism, a 
general belief in the God of Balaam and Melchisedek. 
Thus the testimony of science is confirming the scriptural 
record. And who knows but it may yet be found that 
many dwelling in the shadow of paganism, and now 
called pantheists, were worshippers of the true God ? 
" We see in the history of the religions of China," says 
Professor Martin, of the Imperial College a,t Pekin, " a 
process directly the reverse of that which cer- 

...... -^ The Chinese. 

tain atheistic writers ot modern .Europe assert 
to be the natural progress of the human mind. Accord- 
ing to them, men set out with the belief of many gods, 
which they at length reduce to unity, and finally supersede 
by recognizing the laws of nature as independent of a 
personal Administrator. The history of China is fatal to 
this theory. The worship of one God is the oldest form 
of Chinese religion, and idolatry is an innovation." 2 

i Cudworth, Vol. I., p. 589. 2 New Englander, April, 1869. 



62 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

There is evidence also in the Orphic poetry of 

The Greeks. ^ _ . , - , - , 

Greece, that the most ancient thinkers of that 
land believed in one God, — "one supreme, unmade 
Deity, the original of all things." Was there nothing of 
this nature in the mind of the Greek poet when he wrote, 
" Nothing is accomplished on the earth without thee, O 
God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their 
folly"? And what shall we say to the words of Soph- 
ocles in the (Edipus ? " May destiny aid me to preserve 
unsullied the purity of my words and of all my actions, 
according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in 
the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for their father, 
to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and 
which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme 
God, and one who waxes not old." Or listen to. this, 
found on a roll of papyrus in the coffin of an Egyptian 
mummy : " I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that 
replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, habitation of 

mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. 

from Egypt. J am the g reat and mi S ht y God > the Most Hi g h > 

shining in the midst of the careering stars, and 
of the armies which praise me over thy head. It is I who 
chastise and who judge the evil doers and the persecutors 
of godly men. I discover and confound the liars. I am 
the all-seeing Judge and Avenger; the guardian of my 
laws is the land of righteousness." Here, now, is a voice, 
coming to us out of the ancient wonder-land, from a time 
far beyond its degrading idolatries, which seems to catch 
up and sound forward the words spoken to Adam and 
Noah. 

Ernest Naville, late Professor of Philosophy in the 



PANTHEISM. 63 

University of Geneva, has taken pains to gather 
up these vestiges of ancient monotheism, in his of Professor 
able work entitled " The Heavenly Father ; " 1 
and he asks, in view of the mass of evidence they afford, 
" Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism, and thence 
rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the 
traces of comparatively pure monotheism first show them- 
selves in the most recent periods of idolatry ? Contem- 
porary science," he adds, " inclines more and more to an- 
swer in the negative. It is in the most ancient historical 
ground, that the laborious investigators of the past meet 
with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the 
ground a young and vigorous beech tree, and come back a 
few years afterwards : in place of the tree cut down you 
will find coj)pice wood ; the sap which nourished a single 
trunk has been divided among a multitude of shoots. 
This comparison expresses well enough the opinion which 
tends to prevail among our learned men on the subject of 
the historical development of religions. The idea of the 
only God is at the root ; it is primitive, polytheism is de- 
rivative. A forgotten, and as it were slumbering, mono- 
theism exists before the worship of idols ; it is the con- 
cealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have 
absorbed all the sap." Nor does Professor Naville reach 
this conclusion by any path in which his own faith in 
Christianity might sway him. Distrusting himself, he 
appeals to those who may claim to speak with authority 
on the subject ; and the response which he gets from one 
of the most learned of archaeologists is, "The general 
impression of the most distinguished mythologists of the 

i Published by W. V. Spencer, Boston, 1867. 



64 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

present day is, that monotheism is at the foundation of 
all pagan mythology." 1 It is now generally held by the 
best mythologists, that fetichism is a less ancient form of 
religion than the worship of ancestors. Religious honors, 
paid to famous progenitors, were the rites which naturally 
grew up first, after men had- forgotten the true God. A 
distinguished ancestor had some symbol, — a 
feScKsm. dog, crocodile, reindeer, or other natural object, 
— by which he was known among his contem- 
poraries, and which gradually became the fetich of his de- 
scendants. The synonyme for " fetich," in the dialect of 
the North American Indians, seems to have been " totem ; " 
and the religious worship which grew up among 
SieVudfans^ them has been called totemism. Hence Long- 
fellow says, in one of his poems, — 

" And they painted on the grave-posts 
Of the graves, yet unforgotten, 
Each his own ancestral totem, 
Each the symbol of his household ; 
Figures of the bear and reindeer, 
Of the turtle, crane, and beaver." 

But whether or not we have here a true account of the 
origin of fetichism, " it is enough for my purpose," again 
using the words of Naville, " to have shown that it is not 
merely the grand tradition guaranteed by the Christian 
faith, but the most distinctly marked current of contem- 
porary science, which tells us that God shone upon the 
cradle of the species. The August Form was veiled, and 
idolatry, with its train of shameful rites, shows itself in 
history as the result of a fall which calls for a restoration, 

i Pictet. 



PANTHEISM. 65 

rather than as the point of departure of a continued 
progress." 

Therefore, without going farther into the his- 

. . Spinoza our 

tory of ancient systems, and admitting that the starting- 

. point. 

leaven of pantheism was m many of them, to a 
greater or less extent, I come back to the lonely exile of 
Amsterdam as our proper starting-point in the survey 
undertaken. It is cheering to find that the latest re- 
searches of scholars and critics are falling in so well with 
our inspired traditions. This look into the remote past, 
through the glass of science, also strengthens our position 
as to the first origin and the genesis of all unbelief. Sej)a- 
rated from God, the human mind becomes lost in its own 
speculations. As it turns back to him, it partakes again 
of the spirit of a pure monotheism, which the students of 
history may have sometimes unjustly condemned as pan- 
theism. Presuming it to be such, they have found it to 
be such, as there are not wanting those who have found 
the same thing in the New Testament. Where, however, 
the human mind has not thus turned back, but has kept 
on with its face away from God, it has taken one or the 
other of two opposite paths of infidelity. Which of 
these two paths it has in any case taken, has depended on 
its inherent tendency, whether to make the outward or 
the inward its starting-point of inquiry. There did un- 
questionably exist in ancient times, and in various coun- 
tries, men occupied with philosophy and religion who 
sought their data in the inner world of consciousness. So 
far as those thinkers were without knowledge of the true 
God, they undoubtedly inclined to pantheism, — losing the 
5 



66 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

human in the divine, substituting emanation for creation, 
and confounding the Maker of all things with the work of 
his hands. 

But this ancient pantheism was unshapen, 
belorewm. changeable, crude, indeterminate, vague. It 
was forever repeating itself in one form or an- 
other; slightly varied, to suit the genius of different 
countries and ages, yet on the whole confirming the truth 
of Dugald Stewart's remark, who says, in view of the 
frequent recurrences of the same essential error, " One is 
almost tempted to believe that human invention is limit- 
ed, like a barrel organ, to a specific number of tunes." 
Gleams of the vast conception, now eagerly grasped and 
now cast aside, flash out upon us all along in the path- 
ways of ancient thought ; but that conception seems never 
to come forth, and plant itself in solid proportions before 
us ; it never unfolds into a well-adjusted and comprehen- 
sive system. We catch only elusive glimpses of the 
vision ; vague hints and impressions, with no fixed centre 
about which to crystallize; faint foreshadowings of the 
doctrine whose elaborator and expounder was yet to come. 
Course of ^e weai T a g es °f paganism circled on. Hu- 
thou^M manity,.cut off from God, groped after its an- 
sketched. c i e nt blessedness, but went sounding on a dim 
and perilous way. The great lights of philosophy burned 
out, one after another, or withdrew into the heavens. 
Then " the Desire of all nations " appeared. Wise men 
followed his star, and, paying their homage at his feet, 
found again the glory which had been lost. But not all 
were wise. " He came unto his own, and his own received 
him not." And that nation of despisers and rejecters, 



PANTHEISM. 67 

dashed in pieces for its unbelief, was scattered over the 
world. The Great Light, seen of them that sat in the 
region and shadow of death, rose towards the meridian ; 
and to it the moon and stars did obeisance. After dis- 
playing for a time its glory, so full of grace and truth, the 
mists of human selfishness began to obscure it. It was 
hidden from the world on which it had briefly shone in 
triumph, and the night of •the dark ages descended. And 
not until those ages had passed away, in the full morning 
of modern literature, when the Bible was in the hands of 
the people, and humanity everywhere was awaking as to 
some new destiny, did the high priest of pantheism ap- 
pear. Born of the proud but rejected stock, spurning 
Judaism, and seeing no beauty in Christ, he braves the 
religious faith of his own time, and claims to interpret the 
dream of benighted philosophy. 

Yes, to Spinoza belongs the honor, whatever 

. .... Spinoza's 

that may be, of grasping the principle of former system the 
impressions and tendencies, and fixing forever 
the laws and limits of pantheistic speculation. He seized 
the essence of the world-old dream. And not only that, 
but he made it stand forth so completely in his exposition, 
that he may be said to have necessitated the formulas of 
his most famous successors ; as Newton, when he enun- 
ciated the principle of gravitation, became virtually the 
author of all subsequent astronomy. The influence of 
Spinoza in the history of pantheistic thinking, reminds us 
of the great river which flows through the central valley 
of the United States. His mind was the point, far up in 
untrodden wilds, where previous tendencies were first 
gathered into a single fountain head. He scooped the 



68 HALF TROTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

channel into which the brooklets emptied themselves, and 
which drained the neighboring swales and marshes. It 
was the rush of his tireless genius that gave unity, direc- 
tion, and momentum to the stream. He has had many 
successors ; but, drawn irresistibly towards the main cur- 
rent, they at length lose their independent life, and be- 
come, as it were, the tributaries of his greatness. 

I must not omit here, in claiming this pre- 
Bruno. ° f cedence for Spinoza, to mention one other name 
which is nearly related to the rise of pantheism 
in modern times. Giordano Bruno is thought by some to 
deserve the place assigned to the great Hebrew thinker. 
Even Willis, the biographer of Spinoza, and editor of his 
Correspondence and Ethics, inclines to this opinion. He 
thinks it impossible that Spinoza should not have been 
familiar with the works of Bruno, and wonders that he 
nowhere alludes to them, while they so thoroughly antici- 
pate the main doctrines of his system. " In the present 
day," says he, " we should hold the man who borrowed so 
freely as our philosopher has certainly clone from his pred- 
ecessor, to be guilty of unmitigated plagiarism, did he 
fail to acknowledge the obligation." 1 But it is by no 
means certain that Spinoza deserves this wound in the 
house of his friends. He must be acquitted of anything 
approaching dishonesty. He had too much intellectual 
pride, to say nothing of his general character, ever to 
deck himself with the plumes of another. Bruno certainly 
had as many advantages as the outcast Jew for becoming 
the leader of his school, if he deserved to be. He was 
not of the rejected race, but a Christian Catholic. He had 

i Life, Correspondence, and Ethics, General Introduction, p. 11. 



PANTHEISM. 69 

the favor of public position in his native Italy, resided in 
England for a time, where he was the friend of Sir Philip 
Sidney and received many attentions from the queen, 
was an expounder of the views of Copernicus, and finally 
acquired the renown of martyrdom at the stake for his 
scientific heresies. His writings had been before the 
world three quarters of a century, when the Ethics of 
Spinoza appeared. It is certainly strange, considering the 
whole case, that Spinoza, if a mere copyist of his views, 
should have so thoroughly displaced him, and usurped all 
his honors. The natural conclusion is, that Bruno, though 
a pantheist in many of his utterances, was not always 
consistent with his theory, and that he lacked the system- 
atizing power which was so remarkable in Spinoza. But 
whatever the verdict of justice should be, as between 
these two masters, it is idle to quarrel now with the 
judgment of history. The scholarship of two centuries 
has spoken, nor is it probable that any good cause can be 
discovered for reversing its decision. 1 , 



Spinoza did his work with every help towards 

. . /-•-., Intellectual 

doing it well. The gracious God, who makes activity of 

& to ' the age fa- 

his sun to rise on the evil and the good, with- vorabie to 

Spinoza. 

held from the daring thinker no advantage. It 
was the seventeenth century; that century unsurpassed 
for triumphs of the human intellect in the higher and 
more difficult fields of inquiry. Luther died 
eighty-six years before Spinoza was born. It Nation* 01 " 
was the age of the Dutch Republic ; of the 

1 Mr. Lewes, the warm eulogist of Bruno, and who has given us a graphic 
sketch of his eventful life, says of his philosophy, " Its condemnation is writ- 
ten in the fact of its neglect." — Biog. Hist. Phil., p. 388. 



70 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

English Commonwealth; of Richelieu, and the French 

Academy, and the Sorbonne. Bacon's great work, though 

completed, was yet a buried seed, not destined 

Bacon. 

to rise and overshadow the schools of thought 
till after Spinoza had passed away. The founder of the 
pantheistic school of free-thinkers lived, and died, amidst 
the full blaze of the philosophy whose most recent master 
had been Descartes. He must have known the story of 

the Pilgrim Fathers, who, not long before his 
FathS-s grim own f am ity> na d> ^ke them, sought refuge from 

persecution in Holland. His life synchronized 
with the palmy period of the Puritan theocracy in New 
England. Prodigies of human energy, not merely in indi- 
viduals, but on a national scale, were enacting all around 

him. Richelieu's administration was the won- 
Cromweiif nd der of Europe. Spinoza watched the career of 

Cromwell, and saw him at the height of his 
power. In the near past was the story of Dutch heroism, 

struggling to rescue a country from Spanish 

The Dutch. && .& ■ J I 

tyranny, and from the invading sea. The many 

examples of endurance and devotion thus afforded could 

not fail to inspire the ardent Hebrew. It was a time for 

mediocrity to keep out of sight. To venture forth, and 

claim a place among the leaders of the age, became only 

such as were conscious of their ability to measure swords 

with giants. John Locke was born in the same 
Locke. ° 

year as Spinoza; but his influence, especially in 

the sphere of religious thinking, belongs to a later age. 

Sir Isaac Newton was ten years younger than 
Newton. 

Spinoza; but his imperial genius, though fol- 
lowing in the track of Bacon and Locke, gave a lustre to 



PANTHEISM. 71 

the times of which it was born. It was the age of the 
Bodleian Library, the age of faith in the moderns. Men 
had grown less servile towards the old masters, and the 
Baconian maxim that " we are the ancients " was in every 
student's mouth. We have seen that Spinoza corre- 
sponded with Leibnitz, and that he was courted by Louis 
XIV. of France. Surely, if there were any possibilities 
of greatness in him, the attentions he received, and the 
examples all about him, must have aroused them to do 
their utmost. 

Scientific research was everywhere active, and 
crowned with remarkable success, in the time of Trium P hs 

' or science. 

Spinoza. It was in his century that Harvey 
made his famous discovery of the circulation of the blood; 
that Galileo became known as the expounder of the law 
of the equilibrium of bodies, the laws of accelerated and 
retarded motion, and the parabolic nature of the curve 
described by projectiles ; in his age that Torricelli and 
Pascal solved the problem of the pressure of the atmos- 
phere ; that Napier invented the logarithmic tables ; that 
the binomial theorem was discovered, letters 
used for notation, algebra applied to the inves- Mathemat- 
tigation of the properties of curves. Pascal 
and Descartes expounded the cycloid ; Kepler show T ed 
that the circle is composed of an infinite number of trian- 
gles, the sphere of an infinite number of pyramids, the 
cylinder of iin infinity of prisms. Spinoza beheld, in 
astronomy, the most wonderful discoveries of 

Astronomy. 

modern times. Kepler, a believer in the old 
philosophy rather than the new, had discovered that the 
planetary orbits are ellipses ; that the sun is fixed in 



72 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

one of the foci of all those orbits ; that the radius vector 
of each planet passes over equal spaces in equal times; 
that the square of the time of revolution is, in every 
instance, as the cube of the mean distance from the 
sun. In the midst of these sublime achieve- 

Optics. 

ments, optics came forward to lend its helping 
hand. The telescope, invented by Galileo, vastly widened 
the field of " the science of space." The moons of Jupiter 
were observed ; and the phases of Venus, and the occulta- 
tious of the planets, were used as data in determining 
longitude. 

But it was not alone in the study of nature 
Jhe e seven- ° f tnat tms a g e excelled. Spinoza was the con-. 
tury. Cea temporary of the greatest lights in modern lit- 
erature, — the greatest lights in all literature. 
The first half of the seventeenth centurv was the golden 
age of the drama. Corneille, Calderon, Shakespeare, Jon- 
son, Beaumont and Fletcher lived and wrote during that 
period. Cervantes gave to the world Don Quixote in this 
age. John Milton was the contemporary of Spinoza. To 
show the activity of the theological and religious mind in 
this era, it is needful only to name the West- 
5ctfvity^ lcal minster Assembly, the Synod of Dort, the con- 
troversy between Augustinians and Arminians, 
Port Royal, Jansenism. What splendor of intellect, what 
keenness of logic, what patience of labor, and how great 
wealth of piety and burning devotion are called up to our 
minds by the mention of such names as John Howe, 
Richard Baxter, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Barrow, John 
Owen, Stillingfleet, Tillotson, Fenelon, Bossuet, Flechier, 
Bourdaloue ; all of which belong to the age of Spinoza. 



PANTHEISM. 73 

It was in the very focus of all this unparalleled bril- 
liancy of thought, with a mighty hunger for truth, driven 
to his task by the persecution of friends, and every energy 
aroused to its utmost by the great examples about him, 
that the champion of pantheism took up his problem. 
God seemed, in* his providence, to have specially arranged 
for the solution under the most favorable circumstances 
possible. The man, the age, and the immediate influences 
under which he acted, were all that the most earnest 
friends of the cause could desire. If it failed despite 
these signal advantages, it would fail utterly 
and irrecoverably; and therefore God did not purpose, 
withhold them. Wishing to show to his chil- 
dren that the speculation they had chased so many ages 
was a baseless dream, he allowed it every opportunity for 
proving itself true. When all things were ready, and 
victory seemed most likely to crown the adventure, the 
word was given, Come forth into the arena ; produce your 
cause, and set in order your arguments. 



LECTURE II. 

The Nature and Grounds op Pantheism. 

A general definition of pantheism may be 
pa e ntheism° f & iven in few words. It is the doctrine that 
God includes all reality, and is identical with it, 
nothing besides him really existing. To use the Greek 
phrase, he is to sv xal id nav — the One and the All. 
Spinoza's way of stating it is, " Besides God, no substance 
can exist, or be conceived to exist." 1 

Howitdif- ^ ne doctrine thus enunciated will be made 
thelsmand clearer, perhaps, by comparing it with theism 
eism. an ^ atheism. The theist separates nature from 
God, in his system, and recognizes the existence of both; 
the atheist starts from nature, and denies the existence of 
God; the pantheist starts from God, and denies the ex- 
istence of nature. Atheists and pantheists agree in 
opposing the theist, alleging that his doctrine involves a 
species of dualism, — not the dualism of Zoroaster and the 
Manichaeans, which asserts the eternity of matter and of 
moral evil, but that distinction between the Creator and 
the creation which admits of secondary causes in nature, 
and of free-will in the rational creature. The dualism is 
only that which is necessary in order to moral govern- 

* Ethics, Part 1, Prop. xiv. 

74 



PANTHEISM. 75 

ment and responsible action. Yet objection is made to it, 
as not evolving all reality out of a single principle; as 
implying an ethical universe, whereas all existence is em- 
braced under the natural, and must be so regarded, or 
there can be no simple and perfect philosophy. The atheist 
and pantheist are alike in starting with a single postulate, 
which, they claim, is all-inclusive ; and they throw out 
the matter of freedom and responsibility for the assumed 
philosophical advantage of entire unity of system. But 
though alike in standing upon a basis of monism, they 
seem nevertheless to be in direct and necessary antagonism 
to each other. One of them does not believe in any God, 
the other believes in nothing but God. This hostility is 
apparent rather than real, however, at least in its religious 
aspect ; is not so much in ideas as in language. Wherehl 
When the atheist has explained what be means J^theism d 
by the word " nature," and the pantheist defines agree " 
that which he chooses to call " God," it is often clear that 
they both mean the same thing ; that they occupy common 
ground in their attitude towards Christianity, although their 
methods of philosophizing may be opposite. One denying 
nature, and the other everything but nature, it is clear 
that they must alike reject the s?^er-natural. The uniniti- 
ated reader gets a profound impression of the piety of 
Spinoza while reading the pages in which Novalis extols 
him as " the God-intoxicated man;" but when he learns 
that the " God " which produced this intoxication was only 
an impersonal substance constituting the universe, he 
knows that he has been misled by a verbal juggle. Pie- 
ty quite as good as this might be legitimately felt, and 
no doubt was, by Auguste Comte, if not also by Baron 
d'Holbach. 



76 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 



Lancruase And here we discover, at the very threshold 

of panthe- 
ists otten 
ambiguous 



of its temple, one of the vices of pantheism. It 
is less honest than atheism. Has it at first 
sight a somewhat noble and captivating look ? This is 
because it puts on disguises. It uses the language of 
theism, and even of Christianity, to inculcate a doctrine 
which no Christian or theist can for a moment think of 
entertaining. Herder and Schleiermacher, pointing to the 
verbal dress in which Spinoza's thoughts were at times 
put, might seem to have a warrant for insisting that he 
was a Christian ; and Schleiermacher might say that he 
was not as impious as his critics declared him to be, when 
once in the midst of a sernion he exclaimed, " Offer up with 
me a lock of hair to the manes of the rejected but holy 
Spinoza." It would seem, however, from the manner in 
which it is here proposed to honor Spinoza, that the enthu- 
siastic preacher, to say nothing of the philosopher himself, 
was in a state of mind bordering on paganism. Justly 
does Mr. Morell say, speaking of the theistic language of 
Spinoza, " A being to whom understanding, will, and even 
personality is denied ; a being who does not create, but 
simply is / ^vvho does not act, but simply unfolds ; who does 
not purpose, but brings all things to pass by the necessary 
law of his own existence, — such a being cannot be a father, 
a friend, a benefactor ; in a word, cannot be a God to man, 
for man is but a part of himself. It may be more correct 
to term the philosophy of Spinoza a pantheism than an 
atheism ; but if we take the common idea or definition of 
Deity as valid, then assuredly we must conclude that the 
God of Spinoza is no God, and that his pantheism is only 
a more imposing form of atheism." There is a tradition 



PANTHEISM. 77 

that Spinoza, when about to publish one of his pantheistic 
writings, showed it to a friend, and that the word " God " 
was not to be found in it, but only the terra " nature," where 
the other word stood in the printed volume. His friend, 
it is said, induced him to make this change wherever he 
could, substituting the theistic for the atheistic term, fear- 
ing that if he did not, the treatise would make no disciples, 
but only arouse dangerous hostility. It is easy enough to 
see that Spinoza uses these terms interchangeably. He 
says, in the Introduction to the Fourth Part of the Ethics, 
" The eternal and infinite being whom we call God or Na- 
ture, as he exists of necessity, so does he act of necessity." 
He therefore might have altered his manuscript to mislead 
or conciliate a class of readers. But the story may well 
be doubted ; for Spinoza, whatever must be said of his 
system, was a thoroughly fearless man, despising hypocrisy, 
and scorning to turn his hand over in the hope of disarming 
opposition. The tradition may have arisen from the fact 
that some of his works were published under fictitious 
names in various parts of Europe, though without consul- 
tation with him, and with such changes as his admiring 
disciples thought would help to give them currency in the 
philosophical world. 

This extraordinary use of lanfma^e, even if 

J ° . Many names 

not intentionally dishonest, has, as a matter of for one 

J ' ' thing-. 

fact, deceived many. It also enables the pan- 
theist to make a show of denying, and indignantly repel- 
ling, any charges of irreverence or impiety that may be 
brought against him. He can subscribe to the whole 
Christian vocabulary, without making it apparent, except 



78 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

to those who "understand his system and his definitions, 
that he resolves all religions, together with everything 
else, of whatever claims or appearance, back into an eternal 
nature-process. Any terminology, from that of apostolic 
fervor down to the hardest scholastic barbarisms, can be 
made to serve his turn. John Sterling, replying to a re- 
mark made to him one day by his friend Thomas Carlyle, 
said, "That is flat pantheism." "And what if it were 
pot-theism, if it were true?" was Carlyle's rejoinder. 1 
The audacious hero-worshipper was utterly indifferent to 
terms. They were but the " clothes " of philosophy to his 
view, and might be changed never so often, he cared not 
how often or in what way, so long as the substance within 
them remained intact. In the biography of Sterling which 
Carlyle wrote, and in which he labors so hard to make 
Sterling out a religious doubter essentially at one with 
himself, he shows that he was not above playing the 
juggler, and that, too, with so sacred a matter as his friend's 
religious convictions. His complaint of Archdeacon Hare 
for emphasizing the Christian faith of Sterling, might, so 
far as it implies a one-sided treatment of the subject, be 
more properly made against him. Among the terms 
frequently used by pantheists, and which they regard as 
synonymous, or nearly so, are Father, All-Father, Heavenly 
Father, Nature, Substance, God, Subject-Object, World- 
Ego, Indifference of the Subjective and Objective, the 
Identity-Point of Existence and Non-existence. The lan- 
guage hardly seems a caricature, in which an English 
Satirist represents the later disciples of Spinoza as say- 
ing,— 

i Carlyle's Life of Sterling (Boston, 1852), p. 167. 



PANTHEISM. 79 

" We worship the Absolute-Infinite, 
The Universe-Ego, the Plenary -Void, 
The Subject-Object Identified, 
The great Nothing-something, the Being-Tbought, 
That mouldeth the mass of chaotic Nought, 
Whose beginning unended, and end unbegun, 
Is the One that is All, and the All that is One." 

Thus it appears, from this very slight examination of 
the pantheistic use, or rather misuse, of terms, that we must 
know the system if we would not be deceived by popular 
expositions of it. 

I pass, therefore, to the premise from which Knowledge 
Spinoza set out, and the method by which he zLm P wMch 
finally reached his pantheism. And here I of thfawwfc 
must bespeak the forbearance of all, knowing 
how difficult it is to represent his system adequately. 
Fortunately my purpose does not require me to undertake 
an exhaustive statement of Spinozism. I am not assuming 
the office of an historian of philosophy, but simply sketch- 
ing the general course of speculative thought, so far as 
may be needful to show the origin of a class of popular 
infidelities. By keeping to the plain starting-point and 
clear drift of Spinozism, and not attempting what would 
be superfluous, I shall hope to be sure of my ground, and 
at the same time to accomplish all I have purposed. 

I have already intimated that Spinoza was a _^ 

J 1 Descartes 

student of Descartes. It will be proper, there- ™ a §, pi " 
fore, to say a few words of that philosopher, and gulde - 
of his peculiar doctrines. The question has been argued 
at some length whether Spinoza found the germs of pan- 



80 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

theism in Cartesianism, or in another and earlier Thig 
system. One theory is, that he was a follower doubted - 
of Averroes, and that he took the elements of his thinking: 
from the Arabian philosophy. Others have maintained 
stoutly that he was a Cabalist, and found the principles 
of his pantheism in the comments of Maimonides and 
Aben-Ezra on the Hebrew Scriptures. But Spinoza's 
Opinion of French translator, Saisset, after discussing each 
of these views carefully, rejects them both as 
untenable, and affirms that the true filiation is with the 
Cartesian philosophy. This conclusion I have adopted, 
for reasons yet to be given. 

Rene Descartes was born near the end of the 

Parentage 

of Dos- sixteenth century, of one of the noble families 

cartes. J ' 

of France. He is said to have been a sickly 
child, of diminutive size, noted for thoughtfulness in his 
earliest years. In this he reminds us of Spinoza, as also 
in the fact that he was carefully nurtured in the faith of 
his fathers. His education was intrusted to the Jesuits. 
But like the Hebrew youth, yet to follow in his steps, he 
soon began to distrust the lessons of his teachers. He 
set almost no value on all they taught him, with the single 
exception of mathematics. " As soon as I was old enough 
to be set free from the government of my teachers," says 
he, " I entirely forsook the study of letters ; and, determin- 
ing to seek no other knowledge than that which Ear i y pur _ 
I could discover within myself, or in the great pose - 
book of the world, I spent the remainder of my youth in 
travelling." 1 He therefore had before him a double work 
to perform : first he must divest himself of all notions thus 

1 Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 321. 



PANTHEISM. 81 

far acquired ; and then he must find some criterion by 
which to distinguish the false from the genuine, in his 
search for truth. The rule he at length adopted was cer- 
tainly rigid enough, if adhered to, to guard him against 
any impositions of error : it was — to accept no cntenon 
doctrines but those the truth of which was too 
clear to be questioned. We are to see in what direction 
this principle led him, and whether he or Spinoza was 
more faithful to it in the pursuit of wisdom. But even in 
regard to this criterion of truth, the originality of Descartes 
has been doubted. May Spinoza not have taken this, too, 
from the Arabian philosophy? Mr. Lewes, in 

!Not oriffi- 

his charming sketch of Algazzali, quotes that nai with 

° _ . Descartes. 

remarkable thinker as saying, " It was evident 
to me that certain knowledge must be that which explains 
the object to be known, in such a manner that no doubt 
can remain, so that in future all error and conjecture con- 
cerning it must be impossible." 1 By this rule, strictly 
applied, the Oriental student found himself shut up to his 
own consciousness in the search for truth. He found in 
the sect of the Soufis, the mystics of the East, the best 
examples of his principle in action ; though he says that 
some of them went too far, " imagining themselves to be 
amalgamated with God, or identified with him." Avoiding 
this extreme, which would have made him a Spinozist 
before Spinoza, Algazzali says, " I declare that the convic- 
tion was forced upon me that the Soufis indubitably walked 
in the true paths of salvation. Their way of life is the 
most beautiful, and their morals the purest that can be 
conceived." 

1 Biographical Hist. Phil., p. 363. 

6 



82 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Testimon ^ ut tnoil gh tne Cartesian maxim for discover- 

cartes?po- ni & trutn nac ^ been held by others, this does not 
Bition. detract from Descartes' real merits. He was 

not a plagiarist in the discreditable sense of the word, any- 
more than Spinoza was while pursuing paths already trod- 
den by Giordano Bruno. Descartes should, no doubt, have 
the somewhat questionable honor of being the real master 
of the founder of pantheism. And inasmuch as Spinoza 
claimed, and might with a degree of justice claim, that his 
conclusions were a logical development of Cartesianism, it 
will be necessary to look at some of Descartes' fundamental 
doctrines. Besides the coincidence already noticed, it will 
appear, I think, that Fontenelle was right in saying that 
Spinozism is " Cartesianism pushed to extravagance." So 
far as conclusions go, the remark of Dugald Stewart is, no 
doubt, correct, that " no two philosophers ever differed more 
widely in their metaphysical and theological tenets ; " but 
if we consider only premises and methods of reasoning, 
it seems to me far from true that Spinoza, as Stewart says, 
"agreed with Descartes in little else than his physical 
principles." That it was from Descartes especially that 
Spinoza took the principles of his system, will appear, I 
think, as we go forward. The maxim, that that only is to 
be accepted as true which cannot be rationally doubted, 
was, as no one has attempted to deny, a cardinal rule with 
Spinoza. This appears in his whole statement of the doc- 
trine of knowledge; where he rejects as "hearsay," or as 
"inadequate," all. those notions which do not come through 
the immediate grapple of the mind w T ith the very substance 
of truth. We shall see how strictly he adhered to this 
rule, at least in purpose, and how quick he was to see 



PANTHEISM. 83 

and expose any violation of it in the reasonings of 
Descartes. 

The points in the Cartesian philosophy, which Four main 
may be regarded as paving the way to Spinozism, cartesiau- 
if not indeed its very germs, are four in num- lsm ' 
ber : 1. The renowned formula Cogito, ergo sum ; 2. The 
argument for proving the divine existence ; 3. The doctrine 
that there are no second causes ; 4. The theory that all 
truth is susceptible of proof by the method of mathematics. 
In. all cases of disagreement with Descartes, Spinoza, as 
can be successfully shown, I think, disagreed with him 
simply as a logical and thorough going adherent to these 
postulates. 

The formula Cogito, ergo sum (I think, there- 
fore I am), was laid down by Descartes as ex- therefore i 

n J am." 

pressive of the spirit of his whole system. In 
this sentence a broad meaning is given to the word " think." 
Descartes understands by thought any fact in conscious- 
ness, whether intellectual, emotional, or voluntary. "I 
designate by the word i thought,' " says he, " all those facts 
of which we are internally conscious ; and of these our 
consciousness itself is one. And so not only to know, to 
will, and to imagine, but even to feel also, is here the same 
thing as to think." x But it has been stoutly denied that 
the Cartesian formula proves even personal existence. 
Gassendi thought it a flagrant breach of the philosopher's 
own rule that nothing should be held true which 
admits of rational doubt, to infer the fact of a Gassendi 

r. . , . n , . , . and Huxley. 

person from the bare existence of thinking. 

The thinking alone is in consciousness ; and to say that 1 

1 Principia Philosophise. 



84 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

think, is a begging of the question. "Prove that you 
think," says Descartes' critic, "and the assertion that you 
exist will follow of necessity. The criticism is valid, no 
doubt ; and it has been presented quite recently by Hux- 
ley, under a modified form. The formula is analyzed by 
Huxley, and shown to contain three distinct propositions, 
one of which asserts the action of a person, another con- 
scious thought, and the other personal existence. But only 
the second of these propositions, that affirming conscious 
thought, can endure the Cartesian test of certainty. " Des- 
cartes, 1 ' says Huxley, " determined as he was to strip off 
all the garments which the intellect weaves for itself, forgot 
this gossamer shirt of the self, to the great detriment, 
and indeed ruin, of his toilet when he began to clothe him- 
self again." 1 The inference from this criticism .is, that 
Descartes, when pushed back into his main position, turns 
out to be the true predecessor of James Mill and his school, 
teaching us that we have nothing to do with substances, 
whether spiritual or material, but only with sensations, 
aside from which there is no ground of certain knowl- 
edge. 

The justice of these criticisms I do not deny. But in 
showing the relation of Descartes to Spinoza, he must be 
taken as he understood himself, and as the pupil took him. 
Strictly speaking, we cannot be conscious of personality ; 
though we may be said to be, in a larger sense of the term. 
The- " self" is something which rests upon the primary 
Descartes to heliefs of the soul. Those -beliefs, as defined 
heunder- as m more modern times, do not seem to have 
self. occurred to Descartes as a basis of certitude.. 

i Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 328. 



PANTHEISM. 85 

He must perhaps be regarded as holding to consciousness 
only in the more restricted sense ; and therefore we must 
grant that his reasoning is illogical, although the work 
before us requires that his conclusions be allowed to stand 
in their historical connections. He clearly means to assert 
that our personal existence is not an inference, but a da- 
tum of consciousness. What if a man doubts his own 
existence, runs the argument. Yet he cannot doubt that 
he doubts ; therefore in any case the existence is a foregone 
conclusion. It is so true a truth that the most obstinate 
scepticism cannot at all invalidate it. Of one thing, then, 
Descartes was absolutely certain ; and on this immovable 
rock he planted himself, resolved to make it a basis for the 
reconstruction of human knowledge. 

But having found this standing-place, his next desider- 
atum was the Archimedean lever. This second requisite 
he claimed to have secured in his method. The 

n ■ • i • t t The Car- 

baSIS oi certitude was consciousness ; and the tesian 

method. 

method of certitude was deduction, — called 
mathematical because always followed in the processes of 
mathematics. The mistake which Descartes here made, 
and which Spinoza did not correct, was in making mathe- 
matics a universal science ; in assuming that all truth lay 
within its domain, and could be reached by its methods. 
Spinoza says, in the Introduction to the Third Part of the 
Ethics, "I shall discuss human actions, appetites, and 
emotions, precisely as if the question were of lines, planes, 
and solids." But our minds are shut up to a very small 
sphere of knowledge, if we can know only what may be 
demonstrated like so many theorems in geometry. The 
method is inadequate, and we cannot explain Descartes' 



86 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

adoption of it, unless, perhaps, he was biassed by his 
great fondness for mathematics. He achieved astonishing 
results in the prosecution of this science, and might prop- 
erly claim to be its especial champion in his times. This 
fact, together with his declared distrust of any doctrine 
which rose only to the level of probability, may account 
for his error. He entered a path from which, as we shall 
soon see, Spinoza found him tripping. The refugee from 
Judaism, no less than the revolted pupil of the Jesuits, 
held the maxim that only what cannot be rationally 
doubted is worthy of belief. "All original truths," he 
contended, " are of such a kind that they cannot, without 
absurdity, even be conceived to be false ; the opposites of 
them are contradictions in terms." 1 

Regarding the formula Cogito,ego sum y as an instance of 
mathematical reasoning, in strict conformity with the Car- 
tesian test of certainty, we are able to see how Descartes' 
conclusion in the case follows. I think is a datum of 
consciousness; and the conclusion I am is involved in 
that datum, so as to be a necessary deduction 
fiSTstep!' fr° m & The two propositions are, in math- 
ematical phrase, identical. That is, the think- 
ing may stand as the first term of an equation, and the 
existence as the second term. One is just as true as the 
other, the truth being in each case assumed ; and there- 
fore, since things which are equal to the same thing are 
equal to each other, they may be put side by side, with 
the sign of equality between them. Thought is an indis- 
putable fact, and thought equals being; therefore being is 
mathematically demonstrated. 

1 Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects (New York, 1868), p. 280. 



PANTHEISM. 87 

Yet even here is a joint in the Cartesian 

,.,'-,, • • , A foothold 

harness, into which the ready critic may thrust forSpmo- 

zism. 

his weapon. Descartes did not seem to see the 
dangerous admission which his statement involved — the 
welcome to Spinozism, broad and manifest. In strict 
fidelity to his own method, he had not proved being in 
itself, or as an objective fact, but only the subjective being 
of which he was conscious. His universe is shut within 
the limits of his own thinking. Has he proved existence? 
That we grant him ; but this assured existence amounts, 
after all, to nothing but the contents of his own conscious- 
ness. All mathematical proof is a series of identical 
propositions. 2 -{- 2 = 4 ; that is, two added to two, and 
four, are simply different ways of saying the same thing. 
Only the being of the subject involved in the thought is 
deducible from the fact of thinking, on mathematical prin- 
ciples. Therefore we must not go out of ourselves., but 
must draw the whole universe of reality into ourselves, 
and make it in some way an integral part of our own con- 
sciousness, if we would know the . universe as the math- 
ematician knows his conclusions. We must cease groping 
abroad, and unravel the tangled skein of our own con- 
scious exercises ; for in these alone are all demonstrable 
truths contained. Thus does the doctrine of Spinoza find 
a foothold in that of Descartes. . If the master attempts 
to prove, by the professed method, any objective world, 
whether spiritual or material, the pupil may turn upon 
him, and assail him with his own weapon. It can be 
shown, beyond the possibility of refutation, that Cartesian- 
ism must come at last to nothing but a species of subjec- 
tive pantheism. It gives the seeker for truth no outlet, 



<5<5 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

but keeps him hopelessly shut up, " cribbed, cofimed, and 
confined," within the narrow sphere of his own conscious- 
ness. God, nature, and humanity, considered as objective 
realities, are swept out of existence at a single stroke. 
The only reality left to every man is the conscious being 
which he finds in his own thinking; and this conclusion 
follows from the Cartesian formula, according to the math- 
ematical method, as used by Descartes himself in the 
search for truth. 

The reco<r ^ * s eas y ^ or thinkers of the present day, who 

Reld" doc- are familiar with the Scotch or intuitional phi- 
ceSIry f t?Shsl° S0 P n yj to P omt out tne f ata l error in Des- 
saved d DeV- e cartes' system, and to show what the a-priori 
philosophy needed, in order to guard it against 
the approaches 'of pantheism. Those necessary truths, 
first earnestly insisted on by Reid, and afterwards 
more clearly defined by Hamilton, are our only escape 
from the bondage to which Cartesianism dooms us. 
They alone can break open the door of the prison in 
which our. consciousness holds us fast bound, and cast up 
a sure highway outward, from the subjective into the 
objective. They bridge the chasm, not only between 
thouoht and that which thinks, but between the me and 
not-me ; between the one and the many, the conscious 
and the unconscious, the spiritual and the material. They 
carry us abroad, out of the narrow circle of individual 
consciousness, to the limits of the universe of truth. Un- 
der their ministration, the contents do not drop out of our 
ideas, so as to leave us but the residuum of blank ideal- 
ism ; nor, on the other hand, do they allow our identity to 
become lost in the matter of our thoughts ; but saving us 



PANTHEISM. 89 

equally, both from pantheism and from pure rationalism 
or sensationalism, they reveal to us substance in phenom- 
ena, and body under the dominion of spirit. Descartes 
did not discover, and the purpose of Spinoza forbade him 
to notice, this outlet of the a-priori philosophy from the 
terrible grasp and confinement of pantheism. 

But as we have kept faithfully to the path indicated by 
Descartes' famous formula, in reaching the point to which 
we are now come, so it will be in strict accordance with 
his principles that we shall reach yet other consequences. 
His demonstration of the being of God completes the 
basis which we have already noticed, in part, for the argu- 
ment in proof of pantheism. "I think, there- 
fore I am," is impregnable when judged by the ^^ arguT 
Cartesian test of truth, as Descartes and Spi- the divine 

tit -i \ii j ,' • existence 

noza both thought. And the next question is, favors Spi- 

i i t t nozism. 

how to rise from our own thought to as solid a 
ground on which to rest the divine existence. Is it pos- 
sible for us to prove, by the exact mathematical method, 
in a way which shall preclude all doubt, the being of a 
God who is external to our thinking, and wholly indepen- 
dent of it? Descartes answers in the affirmative, and 
speaks substantially as follows, in the effort to make good 
his assertion: I have a necessary idea of an absolutely 
perfect being ; but no idea of a being can be absolutely 
perfect unless that being exists, for his existence must be 
one of the elements of his perfection ; therefore the abso- 
lutely perfect being, God, exists. It does not fall within 
my present plan to notice the usual criticisms of this ar- 
gument. Whatever may be said about the assumption 
that actual existence is involved in the idea of a perfect 



90 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

being, — real objective existence, I mean, — no one who 
comprehends the case will deny that Descartes' conclusion 
follows legitimately on pantheistic ground. But to say 
that it follows on the ground of pure theism, we must 
assume that Descartes anticipates, here, the philosophy of 
Reid; that he means, by "necessary idea," one of those 
primary truths which are the foundation of all thinking. 
Thus only can it be shown that his conclusive logic does 
not necessitate pantheism. The theological world seems, 
more and more, to be coming to the position 
mentfor a that our belief in God is fundamental; that it is 

God which 

now tends one of those postulates of the human reason on 

to prevail. 

which we plant ourselves in advance of every 
inquiry after a God; that all our a-posteriori arguments, 
so far from begetting, only serve to clear up and deepen 
this necessary conviction. It is one of the truths which 
lie about us in our infancy, as Wordsworth puts it in 
his Ode on Immortality; which we bring with us when 
we come from God, who is our home ; truths that wake 
to perish never ; 

" Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 
Nor man nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy." 

Descartes seems, at times, to have come very near this 
ground. Mr. Lewes quotes him as saying, " By the word 
idea, I understand all that can be in our thoughts ; and I 
distinguish three sorts of ideas : adventitious. 
only seems like the common idea of the sun ; framed by 

to anticipate . .. . 

this. the mmd, such as that which astronomical rea- 



PANTHEISM. 91 

soning gives of the sun; and innate, as the idea of 
God, mind, body, a triangle, and, generally, all those 
which represent true, immutable, and eternal essences." 
But his precise meaning in these words is uncertain, for 
we again find him explaining, " When I said that the 
idea of God is innate in us, I never meant more than this 
— that nature has endowed us with a faculty by which we 
may know God ; but I have never either said or thought 
that such ideas had an actual existence, or even that they 
were a species distinct from the faculty of thinking." 
This language, therefore, shows us on what ground the 
famous demonstration of a God must be regarded as 
standing. The God whose existence is demon- 
strated must not be held to be anything distinct ^fmenUe* 
from that which thinks, and conceives, and rea- fiSSeism. 
sons. The Cartesian idea of a most perfect 
being is only a form of the thinking faculty revealed in 
consciousness. It is not a truth independent of all expe- 
rience, but simply a shadow of the " self." And therefore 
the thinker, who is conscious of it, is still within the circle 
of his own subjectivity. The being he has found is not 
outward, and personally separate from himself; he is in- 
ward, and constitutes in very deed the thinker's own 
essence and modes of consciousness. 

If it should be denied that this pantheistic conclusion 
follows from Descartes' position, and his theistic friends 
should say that he has proved the being of an objective 
deity, independent of the human consciousness, then they 
are confronted by his method of proof, which 

n , i • i m t The Carte- 

connrms the argument against them. To de- sian meth- 
duce the outward from the inward, as the Car- the ten- 



92 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Atheism tes i an formula did, was doing violence to the 
law of mathematics which requires that the con- 
clusion should be found in the premise. I think, and 
therefore I exist. Now show in consciousness that God 
thinks, and it will be mathematically true that God exists. 
Just here, as already intimated, comes the inevitable leap 
into pantheism. In order to know absolutely that God 
thinks, as I know that I think, God and I must have one 
and the same consciousness. I exist, for I am conscious 
of thinking; and in order to prove mathematically that 
God exists, I must be likewise conscious of his thinking. 
This is the position to which an inexorable logic brings 
us. Man is absorbed into God. Our consciousness of 
thinking is not ours, but God's ; and because God thinks, 
God exists. Thus the existence of a certain something, 
God, Nature, Substance, whatever we choose to call it, is 
demonstrated on mathematical principles ; and beyond 
this self-conscious and absolute Substance, there cannot be 
proved to be any reality. 

Is further evidence needed to show that we have fol- 
lowed Cartesianism out to its logical ultimate? That 
evidence is at hand, in the doctrine of Descartes respect- 
ing second causes. He denied that any such causes exist. 
mu . . , Mr. Morell states his views on this point as fol- 

This tenden- l 

stren-th- r lows : " Creation itself Descartes attributed to 
deniafof^ec- the w ^ of tne Almighty, making even neces- 
oud causes. gary . ^^ c ] e p eu( -j ent U p 0n t } iat w [\^ ra ther than 

upon the nature of things." Therefore two and two are 
equal to four, and the sum of the angles in any triangle is 
equal to two right angles only because God wills that it 
should be so. " More important still, however," says Mo- 



PANTHEISM. 93 

rell, " was his doctrine respecting the act of creation itself. 
To Descartes the whole dependent world, both of mind 
and matter, is a vast mechanism, carried on by external 
laws, — a mechanism which requires the act of creation to 
be ever reproduced, in order to keep it in perpetual and 
harmonious operation. According to this view, there can 
be no direct action of matter upon matter, because it is the 
perpetual efflux of the * vis creatrix ' by which all such 
action is maintained ; and, consequently, secondary causes 
can be nothing more than modifications of the first cause. 
In like manner, also, there can be no direct influence mu- 
tually exerted upon each other by mind and matter, for 
the action of both is dependent on the continuity of the 
creative power, as seen in the laws or mechanism of body 
and soul. In this affirmation, that the universe depends 
upon the productive poioer of God, not only for its first 
existence, but equally so for its continued being and opera- 
tion, there are involved the germs of the several doctrines 
of pre-established harmony, of occasional causes, and, 
finally, of pantheism itself, the ultimate point to which 
they all tend." 1 

So near had Descartes himself come to the 

Spinoza's 

edge of the abyss into which Spinoza " pushed " lo s ic fault - 
him. What was there worth contending for, 
between this scheme of emanation, making God the au- 
thor of all human actions even, and pantheism ? The dis- 
ciple was severely true to the principles of his master. If 
he reduced the universe to a single self-conscious sub- 
stance, it was done in the alembic of Cartesianism. The 
followers of Descartes had no just cause to shout forth 

i History of Modern Philosophy (New York, 1854), p. 120. 



94 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

their indignation from all parts of Europe, thus putting 
the life of the Spinozists in peril. The feeble-bodied, but 
giant-minded, outcast from Judaism had been more faithful 
than any other to the fundamental theses of the great 
idealist. Those Cartesians who still claimed to be on 
Christian ground foamed at the charge of pantheism thus 
laid at their own door. ISTor did it make them any the 
less, but only the more wrathful, to find that the charge 
could by no means be refuted. We may grant, what is 
undoubtedly true, that Descartes did not mean to teach 
such a doctrine. But neither did the good Bishop Berke- 
ley mean to teach the scepticism which Hume deduced 
from his premises. As a matter of fact, the germs of 
pantheism were in the Cartesian philosophy, and needed 
only the acute and logical mind of Spinoza to develop 
them. Given the premise of Descartes, that all truth 
begins in consciousness ; then allow his method, which is 
that of mathematical demonstration ; and with these join 
his limiting of causation to the Deity, and you have all 
that is essential to Spinozism. The premises of the pan- 
theistic system were given to it by Descartes ; and from 
these, as Coleridge has well said, " the deduction is a 
rm chain of adamant." Spinoza can be refuted, 

The prem- - 1 ' 

theism S an< ^ ms a PP a H m g system be shown to be a 
tenable. baseless fabric, in very few words. All truth 
does not begin in consciousness ; the necessities of thought 
give us a sure standing-place outside of our own conscious 
thinking. Furthermore, many things which cannot be 
mathematically demonstrated are nevertheless true. And 
there are efficient causes in men, if not in nature, which 
can never be merged into the one great First Cause. We 



PANTHEISM. 95 

need not fear the might of this self-reliant Hebrew. He 
is vulnerable, like the hero of the Iliad. However well 
protected at all other points, there is one point at which 
he may be successfully assailed. But spare his premise, 
the exposed heel of this logical Achilles, and, like the vic- 
tim in the fable, you must follow where he leads. Bid- 
ding a last farewell to all your convictions of freedom, of 
independent personality, and of real existence ; confessing 
yourself to be a mere phenomenon, an unsubstantial 
shadow of the one absolute Substance, you must go with 
him through that gate upon whose portal the dread line 
of Dame should be written, " All hope abandon, ye who 
enter here." 

I do not claim, in tracing pantheism, as I now have, to 
the philosophy of Descartes, to have followed the exact 
track of Spinoza; but I am fully persuaded, whatever may 
have been the "precise nature of his earlier inquiries, that 
he needed but to keep hold of the Cartesian clew while 
striding forward to his pantheistic conclusions. It is ne- 
cessary only that we enter in through the door- % 

XIig contrail 

way of our own consciousness, if we would position of 

. t n Spinoza. 

reach the persuasion that we stand lace to face 
with the one reality; if we would hold, on logical grounds, 
that our personality, yea, all personality, is merged in 
that absolute whole, is indeed an integrant part of it, while 
it, in so far as it is real, is thereby impersonal. This 
great One, which is the essence of all things, Spinoza 
calls Substance, applying this name to it because it stands 
under and constitutes the whole reality of all those phe- 
nomena of mind and matter which engage our attention. 



96 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 



It is upon this basis of the one absolute Sub- 
fcres d u°it;. mat ~ stance, that Spinoza proceeds to build up his 
dogmatic system. To follow him through, and 
see how he accomplishes this undertaking, would be a 
laborious and tedious task. The form of his exposition is 
such that it cannot be condensed. Every step in it is a 
vital part of the whole. I must therefore be content, as 
my purpose permits me to be, with a simple account of 
the main drift and features of his work. Having seen 
what his fundamental doctrine is, it is natural that we 
should desire some such brief sketch of its plan of devel- 
opment. I shall confine myself, in what follows, to the 
chief work of Spinoza, which he called " Ethics ; " though 
he has set forth his doctrine in other treatises, especially 
in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. This work is a plea 
for the broadest toleration of private religious opinion, 
while at the same-time it argues that the civil power should 
insist on prescribed forms of religious observance. Reli- 
gious worship seems to be regarded somewhat in the light 
of military drill. It is a kind of Papal system, with the soul 
left out; an external order, conducive to social uniformity, 
and necessary to the perpetuity of the state. Forms of 
worship should have nothing to do with actual religious 
beliefs, and should be enforced by the civil authority as a 
discipline which its own safety requires. A full account 
of the views advocated in this treatise may be found in 
Willis's Life of Spinoza, pp. 337-352. 

Taking up, now, the exposition of pantheism 

'Three kinds .,-r^,. i o , ,i • i .,. 

ofknowi- in the Ethics, the first thing to be noticed is, 

ed°"e. 

that Spinoza distinguishes three kinds of knowl- 
edge, or more strictly, perhaps, three methods of inquiring 



PANTHEISM. 97 

after truth. The First kind of knowledge is that which we 
gain by the method of hearsay. And under this are 
included not only "history and tradition, but all those im- 
pressions which we get through the medium of the senses. 
Knowledge of this sort is vain and unreal. However 
much it may have to do with the outward life of men, it is 
merely phenomenal, and therefore unworthy of the true 
philosopher. The Second kind of knowledge, Spinoza 
observes, is that which we attain by applying the logical 
understanding to outward appearances, so as to trace in 
them certain resembl'ances, or classify them under the laws 
by which they are regulated. This is knowledge in the 
Baconian sense, and is to be rejected as having no place 
in a system of demonstrated truths. The Third kind of 
knowledge, which alone Spinoza regarded as deserving the 
name, is that which " arises when by an effort of the reason 
we grasp the very substance of things when we gaze upon 
Being itself." 1 A more precise view of Spinoza's doctrine 
of cognition may perhaps be obtained from Props. XXIX. 
to XLIIL, inclusive, Part. II. Under Proj3. XL., Scholium 
2, he says, "We perceive many things and form many 
notions : 1st, from singulars altered to us by our senses, 
and represented confusedly and without order to the under- 
standing (vide Coroll. to Prop. XXIX.). Such perceptions 
I am therefore accustomed to characterize as cognition 
from vague experience. 2d, from signs ; for example, be- 
cause from certain words which we hear or read we remem- 
ber things, and form certain ideas of these like to those 
by which we imagine the things themselves -(vide Schol. 
to Prop. XVIII.) . Both of these modes of contemplating 

1 Morell, p. 125. Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 279. 

7 



98 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

things I shall for the future designate as cognition of the 
first kind — as opinion or imagination. 3d, and lastly, 
inasmuch as we have common notions and adequate ideas 
of the properties of things (vide Coroll. to Props. 
XXXVIII. and XXXIX. and Prop. XL.), I shall speak of 
these under the titles of reason and cognition of the second 
kind. Besides these two kinds of cognition there is a 
third, as I shall presently show, which I shall entitle. 
intuitive, and which proceeds from the adequate idea of 
the real essence of some of the attributes of God to the 
adequate cognition of the essence of things." Under 
Prop. XLILL, Demonst., he says, " The true idea in us is 
that which is in God, in so far as God is expressed by the 
soul of man, and it is adequate." 1 Here we see, in the 
definition of knowledge which he gives, how Spinoza seeks 
at the very outset to draw us within his charmed circle. 
It is true that many have accepted this definition, or its 
equivalent, without becoming involved in pantheism ; but 
they were held back, and saved, by a power which philoso- 
phy can never bring to bear. 

That immediate cognition of the essence of 

Some ac- 
count of the things, that is, of God, or the one substance in 

Ethics. & : ' \ ' 

consciousness, is the only true and adequate 
knowledge Spinoza everywhere assumes. This appears in 
the First of the five parts into which the Ethics is divided, 
though more especially in some of the subsequent portions. 
Reversing the order of parts, so far as to make the First 
come in last for notice, I will noAV endeavor to state, as 
briefly as I can, the topic of each part and. the manner of 
treatment. In the Second Part of the Ethics, the origin 

1 Willis's translation. 



PANTHEISM. 99 

and nature of Mind are considered. The human 

i-i iii i • t i Subject of 

soul is there held to be, not an independent the second 
thing, but purely a mode of the divine attribute 
of thought. There are prefixed to the forty-nine demon- 
strated propositions, with their corollaries and scholia, 
seven definitions and five axioms. Reality (Def. 6) is 
defined to be the same thing as perfection. To be is to be 
perfect. The first proposition declares that thought is an 
attribute of God, and the second that extension is an attri- 
bute of God. Individual thoughts express the nature of 
God. The soul itself is not substance or being, but simply 
a mode of one of the attributes of substance. 1 Nor can we 
know the soul save through this underlying substance. It 
is a thing which must be comprehended in the infinite 
idea of God. 2 If considered by itself, it appears only as 
a succession of fleeting phenomena. Following this change- 
ful process, and not penetrating through it so as to gaze on 
being itself, Spinoza regards as the road to self-ignorance. 
The observer mistakes appearances for the reality. 
The Third Part of the Ethics treats of the 

Subject of 

source and nature of the Affections. " It will Part Third, 
doubtless appear strange," he says in the Introduction, 
" that I should set about treating the vices and follies of 
mankind in a geometrical way. Yet such is my purpose." 
He begins here with three definitions, the second of which 
is important. We act, he says, when we are the soul or 
adequate cause of what takes place within us or without 
us ; and we suffer when anything thus occurs of which we 
are only partly the cause. He also lays down three postu- 
lates, the first of which says that the human body may be 
variously affected, so that its power of action shall be 

i Part II., Prop. X., Scholium 2. 2 Part II., Prop. VIII. 



100 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TPUTH. 

increased or diminished. Then, in the fifty-nine propo- 
sitions following, it is attempted to show that all the 
pleasurable emotions, such as hope, joy, love, occur through 
the increase of that power of action, and that all the 
disagreeable emotions, such as despair, grief, hatred, result 
from the diminution of that power. 1 It is, in each instance, 
the flowing or ebbing of the one substance. There are 
times when all the emotions of which the soul is capable 
are in such a state of activity as just to balance each other. 
It is the peace of God, of which we are conscious, when- 
ever this equilibrium ensues. Then any greater influx of. 
the divine essence causes an overflow, which is some one 
of the specific forms of pleasure ; 2 and any withdrawal 
of that essence causes a diminution, which we may include 
under the generic name of sorrow. 3 

Spinoza goes on next, in the Fourth Part, to 

Subject of in 

Part treat of Human blavery, or the b trench of the 

Fourth. . . . 

Affections. We are enslaved just in proportion 
to the strength of the emotional element in us. It is the 
tendency of the affections to take from a man his power 
of self-control, and to compel him to pursue evil paths, 
even while he sees and approves the better course. To 
labor for a given end is a species of slavery ; for " a final 
cause, as it is called; is nothing but a human appetite or 
desire considered as the origin or cause of anything." 
God is not under this bondage of the affections, since he has 
no final cause in what he does. " The cause why God acts 
and why lie exists is one and the same, and as he does not 
exist for any end or purpose, so does he not act for any 
end or purpose." 4 Everything, that is, is slavish which is 

i Prop. XI. 2 Part III., Prop. LITI. 

s Part HI., Prop. LV. 4 Part IV., Introduction. 



PANTHEISM. 101 

not purely spontaneous. This doctrine is made to rest on 
a basis of eight definitions and one axiom, and is built up 
into seventy-three propositions, with their demonstrations, 
corollaries, and scholia. "It is impossible," we are told, 
" that man should not be a part of nature." 1 And the 
equilibrium of nature, or the balance of all the passions in 
God, is lost in their coming forth into our consciousness. 
The rays of the colorless .beam are dispersed and but 
partially comprehended. This is the subordination of the 
absolute substance to the particular manifestation ; and it 
is the slavery of the human mind. 

In the Fifth Part the reverse of this case is Sub j ect f 
considered — the power of the understanding, art llth " 
or human freedom, when the mode of the attribute em- 
bodies its essence. There is most freedom in us when we 
are least conscious of the self, and lost in beholding the 
one substance which constitutes all that is real in us. The 
whole of God is revealed in our contemplation, no ray 
refracted, and all so blended as to make one passionless 
experience. Perfect liberty is the perfect spontaneity of 
the infinite God or Nature, and its absolute necessity is 
that which renders it perfect. Spinoza declares, in this 
portion of the Ethics, that " God is without passions, and is 
not affected by any emotion of joy or sorrow." 2 He also 
undertakes to demonstrate that " no one can hate God." 3 
Beatitude is that perfect balance of the passions in their 
manifestation, which amounts to the absence of passion. 
True love is purely intellectual, not emotional ; and " the 
intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the 
infinite love wherewith God loves himself." 4 "I say that 

i Tart IV., Prop. IV. 2 p art v., Prop. XVII. 

s Part V., Prop. XVIII. 4 Part V., Prop. XXXVI. 



102 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

a thing is free," says he, " which exists and acts by the sole 
necessity of its nature ; and I call that constrained which 
is determined to exist and to act in a certain definite way 
by something external to itself. Thus God, though exist- 
ing necessarily, exists freely, because' he exists by the 
necessity of his nature alone. So also God understands 
himself and all things freely, because it follows from the . 
necessity of his nature alone that he understands himself 
and all things else. You see, therefore, that I place free- 
dom not in any free decree of the will, but in free neces- 
sity." 1 The explanatory words show that Spinoza did not 
recognize such a thing as freedom either in God or man, 
save in a way that would apply to all the outgrowths of 
nature equally well ; for these, quite as much as he claims 
in any case, exist and act from an inherent necessity. 

I will return now, after this look forward 

Subject of . 

the First through ©pinoza s system, to what he says more 
•directly concerning God, which occupies the 
First Part of the Ethics. I do this, not with the hope of 
adding to the imperfect outline just given, for my sketch 
must, at the best, be far from adequate. But it may not 
be out of place to introduce here a specimen or two of the 
manner in which this system of pantheism is constructed. 
He begins with laying down eight definitions. The first 
of these says, "By a tiling which is its own 

Definitions. J J & 

cause, I understand a thing the essence of 
which involves existence, or the nature of which can 
be considered only as existent." The third in the series 
says, "By substance I understand that which exists in 
itself, and the conception of which does not require the 
conception of anything antecedent to it." The fourth of 

i Letter to Dr. Schaller, Willis, p. 383. 



PANTHEISM. 103 

them is, " By attribute I understand that which the mind 
perceives as constituting the very essence of substance." 1 
The sixth of these definitions says, " By God I understand 
the being absolutely infinite, i. e., the substance consisting 
of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an infinite 
and eternal essence." 2 

If we are not yet persuaded that there may 

, . , . , n , . Axioms. 

be such a thing as the geometry 01 metaphysics, 
let us follow Spinoza a step farther. From Definitions he 
proceeds to Axioms. There are seven of these prefixed 
to this First Part of his work, such as, " Everything which 
is, is in itself or in some other thing ; " " That which can- 
not be conceived through another must be conceived 
through itself; " " The knowledge of an effect depends on 
the knowledge of its cause." 2 But let us not stop here. 
Let us follow this geometrical pantheist a little into his 
propositions, demonstrations, corollaries, scholia, and the 
letters q. e. d., appended here and there ; thus we may be 
able to see how it is that everything in the treatise, from 
beginning to end, seems nearly as rigid and concise as the 
procedure in Euclid. The fifth proposition, which is de- 
cidedly pantheistic, declares, " It is impossible that there 
should be two or more substances of the same nature or 
attribute." The eighth proposition I will give, together 
with the demonstration, it being one of the simplest, and 

1 It will be noticed that the distinction which Spinoza makes between Attri- 
bute and Substance, is perhaps what may be called subjective rather than 
objective. In a letter to his friend Simon de Vries he refers to these third and 
fourth definitions, and explains : " By Attribute I understand the same thing 
[as substance], save that Attribute, in respect of our understanding, is regarded 
as attaching a certain specific nature to Substance." Willis, p. 279. 

2 Lewea, p. 473. 3 Lewes, p. 474. 



104 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

a good example of Spinoza's method : " Prop. VIII. All 
substance is necessarily infinite. Demonsi. Substance of 
one attribute exists not save as one (by Prop. V.) ; and to 
a demon- ex ^ st belongs to its nature (Prop. VI.). It. will 
stration. therefore be in its nature to exist finitely or infi- 
nitely. Not finitely, however, for then it would have to 
be conceived as limited by another substance of the same 
nature (by Def. 2), which would also have to exist neces- 
sarily (by Prop. VII.) ; in which case there would be two 
substances of the same attribute, which is absurd (by 
Prop. V.). Substance, therefore, exists infinitely : q. e. d." l 
I shall be readily excused, no doubt, for not 

Perfection J ' 

of super- attempting to report Spinoza's argument any 
farther. It seems a little discouraging to one 
at first, when he thinks of going through a metaphysical 
treatise constructed after this fashion. But I can assure 
any one who proposes to make the attempt, that the prog- 
ress is so steady, and the demonstrations are so clear, 
that when once fairly started he will find himself drawn 
irresistibly forward. Let him forget how utterly insecure 
the foundations are, and he will feel an ever-growing 
wonder as he sees this temple of pantheism rising up, 
throwing out its battlements, lifting arch above arch, and 
rearing aloft its towers, — every joint perfect, each stone 
and each timber going to its destined place, the sharpest 
scrutiny unable to detect anywhere the least break, or flaw, 
or weakness. The doctrine of One Substance is the ma- 
terial of which the whole edifice is made. That 
butes of substance has two infinite attributes, Thought 
and Extension. 2 Each of these attributes, fur- 

i Willis, p. 418. 2 Ethics, Part II., Props. I. and II. 



PANTHEISM. 105 

thermore, has, while expressing the essence of the One 
Substance, an infinite number of modes, which modes make 
the whole varying phenomena of what we call finite mind 
and matter. 1 All those phenomena which are viewed in 
their subjective relation to consciousness, are modes of the 
infinite attribute of thought, and all those which 'are seen 
in objective relations, ordinarily regarded as the affections 
of matter, are modes of the infinite attribute of extension. 
Spinoza seems to regard these attributes as mu- Bearin „ on 
tually dependent, so that neither can be con- CJ"^ 
ceived to be, apart from the other — an opinion aiy ' 
which is important, as implying that there can be no 
thought, and therefore no conscious immortality, where 
everything which answers to our idea of bodily organiza- 
tion is wanting. 2 This dualistic manifestation of God 
must go forward, in our consciousness in order that he may 
know himself as still existent. And he is all. Matter and 
finite mind, viewed by themselves, have not a real, but 
simply a phenomenal existence. Soul and body are the 
same thing ; and neither of them is anything but a tran- 
sient evolution out of the universal substance. The earth, 
the heavens, the waters, the continents, man, beast, fishes, 
the birds, the flowers, have no proper being ; they are the 
same great all-in-all, — the absolute substance manifesting 
itself. 

" All nature, he holds, is a respiration 

Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter 

Will inhale it into his bosom again, 

So that nothing but God alone shall remain." 3 

i Ethics, Part II., Props. VIII. and XIII. 

2 See Froude's Short Studies, &c, p. 315. 

3 Longfellow's Golden Legend. 



106 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

According to Spinoza there is no such thing as a created 
universe. He denies the possibility of creation. 1 Cause 
and effect are but different aspects of the same energy, 
natura naturans and natura naturata ; God, nature, the 
absolute, the cosmos, or whatever one may choose to call 
it, continually going out of itself and returning into itself. 
This process, corresponding to what Herbert Spencer calls 
evolution and dissolution, is what we name growth and 
decay, birth and death, in our inadequate language. This 
terrible God, this insatiate Chronos, devouring his children 
as fast as he begets them, has perfect freedom, according 
to Spinoza. Yet here, as already noticed, words are not 
used in their prevailing sense ; for the freedom spoken of 
has no reference to liberty of choice, but is only the cease- 
less power of activity. This all-ingulfing divinity cannot 
act otherwise than it does, 2 nor can it ever pause in its 
action. Its spontaneity is necessary and eternal. We 
have then at last, as Spinoza does not shrink from admit- 
ting, a scheme of universal and invincible fatal- 
Fatalism. °' 

ism. "Free will," he says, "is a chimera, flat- 
tering to our pride, and in reality founded on our igno- 
rance. All that I can say to those who believe that they 
can, by virtue of any free decision of the soul, speak or be 
silent, or, to use a single word, act, is, that they dream with 
their eyes open. Nothing is bad in itself. Good and evil 
indicate nothing positive in things considered in them- 
selves, and are nothing but modes of thinking. Not only 
has every man the right to seek his good, his pleasure, but 
he cannot do otherwise. The measure of each man's right 

1 See Appendix to Part I. of the Ethics. 

2 Ethics/Part I., Prop. XXXIII. 



PANTHEISM. 107 

is his power. He who does not yet know reason, or who, 
having not as yet contracted the habit of virtue, lives 
according only to the laws of his appetites, is as much in 
his right as he who regulates his life according to the laws 
of reason. In other words, just as the sage has an abso- 
lute right to do all that his reason dictates to him, or to 
live according to the laws of reason, in the same manner 
has the ignorant man or the madman a right to every- 
thing that his appetite impels him to take ; in other words, 
the right to live according to the laws of aj^petite. And 
he is no more obliged to live according to the laws of good 
sense than a cat is obliged to live under the laws that 
govern the nature of a lion. Hence we conclude that a 
compact has only a value proportioned to its utility. 
Where the utility disappears, the compact too disappears 
with it, and loses all its authority. There is, then, folly in 
pretending to bind a man forever to his word, unless, at 
least, a man so contrive that the breach of the compact 
shall entail for him that violates it more danger than 
profit." No comment is needed on these plain words. It 
follows from them inevitably, nay, is earnestly maintained 
in them, that there can be no such thing as responsibility 
for moral action, and that right and wrong, as commonly 
understood, are a pure delusion. Ethical or natural evil 
is a notion which ignorance frames to itself, with no shadow 
of actual foundation ; and man, in order to enjoy the largest 
happiness, and attain the fullest development, should seek, 
first of all, to lose his consciousness of such airy phe- 
nomena, and be identified in thought with the Absolute 
Substance which fills and upholds all things. 



108 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

The question here arises, What shall be said 

The a-priori .... n . . _ 

philosophy oi Cartesiamsm in view 01 the conclusions of 

not to be 

judged by Spinoza ? Is it fallacious ? Ouffht it to be 

Spinozism. ° 

altogether eschewed in the search for truth ? 
While not taken rigidly, but as commonly understood, it 
certainly is not to be avoided, even if that were indeed 
possible. Many of the first thinkers of the time are essen- 
tially Cartesians, as many have been in every past age, 
and as will continue to be the fact hereafter. The inherent 
peculiarities of such minds make them what they are. If 
they think at all, it must be on the basis, and by the 
method, of Descartes. This was true of the celebrated 
writers of the school of Port Royal ; more or less true of 
that wonderful genius and Christian writer Blaise Pascal ; 
it was true also of the pious Fenelon, and of Bishop 
Berkeley — so devout a worshipper of the true God, though 
in his theory of the world so deluded. Descartes himself 
was a sincere believer in Christianity. If his works were 
condemned as heretical by the Papal church, this was not 
because he had denied the Lord that bought him, but on 
account of certain physical discoveries, owing to the cri- 
terion of truth which he set up, and because he had sub- 
verted the philosophy of Aristotle as interwoven with her 
scholastic theology. The great master of a-priori thinking, 
whom many leading minds even at the present day follow, 
was a firm believer in the living God of the Scriptures ; so 
firm, that he seems to have mistaken his faith for logical 
demonstration. While Spinoza took from him the princi- 
Maie- P^ es °f pantheism, Malebranche, on the other 

branche. hand, beginning from the same source, deduced 
a body of Christian mysticism. No doubt Spinoza was 



PANTHEISM. 109 

the more acute and logical pupil. It was the ardent piety 
of Malebranche, his strong hold upon the personal Jehovah, 
that saved him. " The union of the soul to God," says he, 
" is the only means by which we acquire a knowledge of 
truth. Let my readers judge of my opinions according 
to the clear and distinct answers they shall receive from 
the Lord of all men. Let us repose in this tenet, that God 
is the intelligible world, or the place of spirits, like as the 
material world is the place of bodies ; that it is from his 
power they receive all their modifications ; that it is in his 
wisdom they find all their ideas ; and that it is by his love 
they feel. all their well-regulated emotions. And since his 
power, and his wisdom, and his love are but himself, let us 
believe, with St. Paul, that he is not far from each one of 
us, - and that in him we live, and move, and have our 
being." 1 No doubt the keen-eyed Spinoza would have 
found his own doctrine here, as easily as in Descartes. 
But Malebranche was not - a logical machine, and therefore 
not a pantheist. His language expresses his deep sense 
of the need of divine illumination in the search for truth ; 
the conviction that we see falsely through the senses, the 
imagination, the understanding, the inclinations, and the 
passions ; but always truly, when we see all things through 
reason restored to its right relations with God. 
The world-renowned Leibnitz was a Car- 

. Leibnitz. 

tesian ; and he bent all the energies ot his great 
mind to refute the conclusions of Spinoza. He did refute 
them, in the judgment of his friends, but not till he had 
added to the philosophy of Descartes certain very impor- 
tant principles. He restored to the idea of a Supreme 

1 Hallam's Literature of Europe. 



110 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Being that creative power for which Descartes had too 
nearly substituted simple emanation ; and in his theory of 
Monads, or independent forces, not only is the doctrine of 
second causes restored, but the later doctrine of intuitions 
or necessary truths is foreshadowed. Herein it was that 
he hinted at the basis on which alone the a-priori philoso- 
The safe- P D y can ^ e save d from pantheism. With him, 
guard ' as with Malebranche, faith in a personal God, 

and in his own independent personality, predominated over 
any logical faith in Cartesianism. Like many others, both 
in earlier and later times, they walked safely along the 
" high priori road " cast up before them. But it was not 
in themselves, while they thus went forward, nor in the 
system they adopted, to direct their steps. That Great 
Light, which is the only true light of philosophy, illumined 
their pathway ; and the Hand on which the universe de- 
pends upheld their goings. 






LECTURE III. 

The German Succession. 
The startling conclusion which Spinoza had 

A reaction. 

reached, and from which he could not be driven 
by Cartesianism, was followed by a general revolt from 
that philosophy. Thinkers gave up their faith in con- 
sciousness as the basis of a system of truth, and began to 
build more and more on experience. The a-priori method 
yielded to the a-posteriori. Deduction was exchanged for 
induction. Sensuous observation took the place of spirit- 
ual conviction. 

Thus a fresh impulse was given to the philos- 
ophy expounded by Bacon, and which had been 
carried forward into the realm of mind by Gassendi and 
Locke. Bacon wrote a century earlier than Spinoza, Gas- 
sendi just before him, and Locke was his contemporary. 
This school had therefore gained a foothold, and could 
boast of powerful adherents, when the real nature of Spi- 
nozism began to be known. Hence the ripened seed of 
Descartes' philosophy, which the astute Hebrew had gath- 
ered, was not immediately sown broadcast. It lay buried 
in the congenial soil of Germany; destined, however, to 
spring forth into a prodigious growth, when empiricism 
should have run its course and proved itself, too, a failure. 



112 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

It does not belong to the present part of my 

This move- , . , ,. . . . , t . . 

ment to be plan to trace this empirical movement in the 

passed over , .. _ . 

for the world oi thought ; a movement which became 

present. - _ 

so powerful towards the close of the seven- 
teenth century, and which was subverted in the eighteenth. 
The Positivism of our times may, I think, find in this its 
lineal predecessor. Condillac, Bonnet, Helvetius, Saint 
Lambert, Conclorcet, Baron d'Holbach, were its high 
priests in France. One of its strongest early advocates in 
England was Thomas Hobbes. David Hume held the 
same relation to it as a critic which Spinoza held to Car- 
tesianism. Taking it upon its own premises, that is, he 
showed its logical ultimate to be universal scepticism ; 
just as Spinoza had shown that Descartes' principles led 
to pantheism. This keen sighted Scotchman was to arise, 
and cut up by the roots the empirical metaphysics of 
Locke ; then Kant was to introduce, instead thereof, the 
genus of a-priori thinking again ; and then the doctrine 
of Spinoza was to experience a resurrection, and to have a 
development which is one of the marvels of speculative 

philosophy. "The God of Spinoza, which the 
SpinozJsm seventeenth century had broken as an idol," is 

the remark of Saisset, "becomes the God of 
Lessing, of Goethe, of Novalis." It is with this German 
pantheism, — only so far, however, as it appears in the phi- 
losophy of the period, — that I am now concerned. Les- 
sing the sceptic, who deemed it less blessed to possess 
truth than to search for truth, was among the earliest of. 
the Germans to awaken an interest in the study of Spi- 
noza ; but he belongs to the department of criticism and 
literature, rather than that of philosophy. His Nathan the 



PANTHEISM. 113 

Wise is perhaps as good a reproduction as we have of the 
spirit of Spinozism, and I shall repeatedly have occasion 
to refer to him; but the present starting-point is more 
properly Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, from which 
the stream of pantheistic thought flows steadily on, 
through the writings of Fichte and Schelling more espe- 
cially, till it comes to an end in the Absolute Idea of 
Hegel. It is with very great diffidence that I enter this 
path, along which so many able critics have been found 
stumbling. There is a tradition that Hegel, near the 
close of his life, said, " Only one of my followers has un- 
derstood me ; and he has misunderstood me." Even with 
the best of qualifications, therefore, I might well shrink 
from the attempt to represent German pantheism with 
thoroughness. But fortunately my plan does not require 
this ; nor is it probable that the numerous class which I 
hope to reach would be greatly aided by such an effort, 
however successful in itself. I shall undertake only so 
much as is requisite in order that certain forms of unbe- 
lief, more or less popular at the present day, 

, .,.,.., . T What is 

may be seen in their historical connections. 1 hereat- 

1 i • i (»i/-i tempted. 

do not claim to be a master ol the '(jrerman 
tongue, nor to have read the works of the famous authors 
just referred to, in the original text ; but I have taken 
pains to verify any statements which seemed to me to 
require it by recourse to that text, and have used only 
those translations which have the sanction of high au- 
thority. Though preferring to walk over the bridge rather 
than swim the river, as Mr. Emerson puts the case, I 
have not hesitated to plunge in and make examination, 
where anything seemed insecure. The writer whom I 



114 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

shall quote chiefly, in sketching the course of thinking 
from Kant to Hegel, is Heinrich Moritz Chalybaeus, of 
whose book, rendered into English by Alfred Tulk, 1 so 
competent a judge as Sir William Hamilton says, that it 
is " a perspicuous and impartial survey of the various 
modern systems of German philosophy, at once compre- 
hensive and compendious." It will be seen I am confi- 
dent, even in the imperfect and fragmentary sketch which 
alone I can hope to give, that there is, in all a-priori 
thinking, a danger on the side towards pantheistic forms 
of unbelief; and my object will be fully accomplished if 
it is made clear that the philosophy of consciousness is 
not a sufficient guide in the search for truth, save where it 
is supplemented and upheld by a divine energy, but car- 
ries one fatally on to emanation, and the confounding of 
effects with their causes, with no promise of a logical 
resting-place short of the One Substance with infinite 
attributes in which Spinoza at last rested. 

Leibnitz, who was mainly a Cartesian, may 
Leibnitz Sf ^e sa ^ to nave nourished the life of Descartes' 
movement, philosophy in the German mind, during the pe- 
riod of its feebleness. He was, notwithstanding 
his seeming arrogance and impatience of contradiction, in 
many respects a remarkable thinker. Nothing short of 
the limitless universe of truth seemed an adequate field 
for his powers, over which his intellect swept on imperial 
wing. But besides this largeness of range, he had, what 
is more to the present point, the rare faculty of kindling 

* Historical Survey of Speculative Philosophy from Kant to Hegel (An- 
dover, 1854). 



PANTHEISM. 115 

enthusiasm in other minds. This last trait has no doubt 
done much towards perpetuating his influence ; for the 
works w^hich he finished with his own hand have been 
less valued than some of those which he stimulated others 
to undertake. It was his mission to open new doors of 
knowledge, to point out with eagle eye the errors of pre- 
vious and contemporaneous thought ; to make suggestions 
and start hypotheses which, in the minds of the rising 
class of thinkers, unfolded gradually into systems of phi- 
losophy. 

This influence was especially manifest in the 
case of John Christian Wolf, who was perhaps Stz-Woif- 
the leading thinker of Germany at the begin- ophy hll ° S 
ning of the eighteenth century. So closely did 
he adhere to the teachings of his master, in the numerous 
works which he published, and which were scattered over 
Europe, that it has been said of him, " He dried, cut up, 
and sold the philosophy of Leibnitz." This criticism 
seems unduly severe, however, for there is evidence that 
Wolf anticipated some of the views of later and more 
famous thinkers ; it is in his writings that the term na- 
tional Psychology, used in the sense of the Kantian 
school, first occurs. But even granting that he added no 
new material to the subject, he was a master of method, 
and gave the discoveries of Leibnitz a systematic shape, 
whereby he taught them many years, and with no small 
success, to his countrymen. It was not an age of great 
intellects. Frederick the Great had drawn around him a 
class of French writers, who were spreading the worst 
results of Sensationalism, and thus a kind of shallow 
eclecticism had* grown up in the very home of Leibnitz. 



116 ha:lf truths and the truth. 

But Wolf, breasting this popular current, marshalled to 
his aid what little was left of the indigenous Teutonic 
spirit, and kept it ready for the dawning that was to 
come. He was, besides all else, the instructor of Imman- 
uel Kant. He thus stands as in some sort a connecting 
link between the philosophical source of pantheism in the 
seventeenth century and of pantheism in the eighteenth 
and nineteenth centuries. As there could have been no 
Spinozism but for the philosophy of Descartes, so without 
Immanuel Kant there could have been no Fichte, Schel- 
ling, or Hegel. It is very true that Kant did not abide by 
the Leibnitz-Woman doctrines ; but the whole influence 
of Wolf strengthened his natural bias, and saved from 
pre-occupation the field in which he was to sow afresh the 
seeds of a-priori speculation. " Wolf," according to Ten- 
neman, whom Mr. Morell quotes as a thoroughly con^e- 
tent witness, " assumed bare thinking as his starting-point, 
overlooked the difference between the formal and the ma- 
terial conditions of thought, considered philosophy as the 
science of the possible in so far as it is possible, made the 
principle of contradiction the highest principle of human 
knowledge, placed mere ideas and verbal definitions at 
the very head of all research, made no difference between 
rational and experimental knowledge, and, though fol- 
lowing the geometrical method, neglected to distinguish 
that which is peculiar to mathematics on the one hand, 
and philosophy on the other, both in their form and in 
their matter." 1 Here, now, as may be readily seen, espe- 
cially in the primacy assigned to "bare thinking," was 
something which could not fail to awaken the national 

i History of Modern Philosophy, p. 152. 



PANTHEISM. 117 

hunger in young Kant's mind. Yet no sure basis of hope 
was given that the hunger thus awakened would be ap- 
peased, so large was the intermixture of empiricism all 
along in the development. 

Kant was of Scotch descent on the father's 
side, though so unmistakably German in his ^"views'." 
habits of thought. The subjective tendency in 
him, however, did not prevent him from holding for a 
time the dogmatic position of Locke. He was early in 
life a student of the Sensational philosophy, and seems 
never to have rescued himself altogether from its power. 
Not substances, but phenomena, the sensations of the 
mind itself, he held to be the proper material of our 
knowledge. It was to this school of English and Scotch 
thinkers, rather than to that represented by Thomas Reid, 
that Kant partly belonged. Though he seems at times to 
come so near the position of Reid, in his treatment of the 
ideas of the reason, he never clearly reaches it. He con- 
demns, in the founder of the intuitional philosophy, that 
affirmation of objective truths which he himself after- 
wards tries to make on less solid ground. It was with 
the speculations of the school of Locke chiefly that Kant 
contented himself, before undertaking his critical philos- 
ophy ; and the impulse to this great work, which removed 
him so entirely from Locke's position, came also from the 
famous 'Scotch critic Hume. "I freely con- 
fess," he says, "that it was David Hume who J^JcrftL 
first roused me from my dogmatic slumber, and by g Hume d 
gave a different direction to my investigations 
in the field of speculative philosophy." 1 By his "dog- 

1 Chalybaeus. 



118 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

matic slumber" we are to understand the mental security 
with which he had gone forward in the search for objective 
truth, while bestowing no attention on the powers and 
limitations of the cognitive faculty itself. He agreed 
with Locke that the material of our knowledge is given 
to us in experience; the question still remaining was, 
whether our notions of efficiency, essences, cause, and 
especially of a First Cause, are purely imaginary, as 
Hume had shown that they, must be on the ground of 
Locke. Knowledge can never transcend experience, was 
the premise which had been laid down. But our experi- 
ence is limited to the mental processes of which we are 
conscious. Therefore, is the inevitable conclusion, we can 
have no knowledge either of cause or substance, or of any 
phenomenon save as it is a part of our own thinking. 
This surely followed, as Kant saw by the aid of Hume, 
from the position taken in the Essay on the Understand- 
ing. But had that Essay given a full account of man's 
cognitive powers ? If it had not, and there was a way 
of knowing besides experience, the universal scepticism 
which Hume had deduced from it might perhaps be 
escaped. Hume afforded him no light on this new ques- 
tion. Still, the violent blow which had been given to the 
received philosophy "struck a sj)ark." Kant could not 
accept the dreary conclusion, that subjective truth alone is 
possible to human knowledge. Fully persuaded as he 
was, that we may know objects external to our own 
thoughts, he saw at once the only way in which Hume's 
scepticism could be effectnally met. Thus far he had neg- 
lected what it became him first of all to do. The work 
needing to be done was of the same nature as that under- 



PANTHEISM. 119 

taken by Locke, though with the hope of a very different 
result. The faculties of the human mind must be exam- 
ined, with a view to showing, if possible, that man has a 
power of cognition by which he may know truths tran- 
scending his own experience. And since this was the im- 
portant doctrine which Kant from the first proposed to 
establish, but which he failed to establish in the Critique 
of the Pure Reason, we treat him unfairly, I think, in sup- 
posing that the Critique of the Practical Reason was in 
any sense an afterthought. This second Critique alone 
claims to reach the end which he had in view from the 
start ; and therefore, whatever must be said of its com- 
parative merits, or even if it must be regarded as wholly a 
failure, justice. requires that it be looked upon as an essen- 
tial part of the design with which Kant set out. 
He begins his inquiry by questioning the posi- 

n T . .. it- Critique of 

tion oi Locke, that we can know only what is the Pure 

. Reason. 

given us m experience ; and the first great pom^ 

to which that inquiry brings him is, that we have a faculty, 

styled by him the Pure Reason, by which we may know 

truths transcending experience. This faculty he proceeds 

to analyze, calling his analysis a Critique. The pure reason 

dwells in a sphere which experience cannot reach ; and it 

gives, out of that transcendent sphere, certain ideas, forms, 

or. regulative principles, which the understand- 

inff is forced to recognize in construing; the mat- the reason 

/» ■■ i i /-v . to the un- 

ter oi our knowledge. Our experience does not derstand- 
indeed amount to knowledge without them. 
They are "synthetic judgments a-priori;" that is, logical 
forms joined to the facts of experience, coming from a 
region above experience, under which forms those facts 



120 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

must be known in order to be true science. The dealing 
of the understanding with the mere matter of knowledge 
is nothing, without those regulative principles which the 
Pure Reason gives to the understanding. Kant's proof 
of these transcendental elements in all true knowledge is 
the same as Reid's proof of the principles of common 
sense, — namely, their necessity and their universality. 

These logical forms of the reason are, in the 
Iffe forms wor ^ °f sense, Space and Time. All men are 
son. herea compelled to know every object of sense under 

both these two forms. The understanding does 
not merely apprehend the material given it in sensation, 
and make up secondary notions therefrom by its own un- 
aided action, but evermore joins with the material of its 
knowledge these two a-priori data of the Pure Reason. 
It is as true in the province of reflection as in that of sen- 
sation ; as true when our minds analyze their experience 
as of the primary experience itself, that these transcen- 
dental forms are present. The reason is continually fur- 
nishing them, wherever the understanding finds any new 
notion. They are synthetic judgments a-priori, without 
which the notion would be impossible ; and because they 
are in every case thus indispensable to knowledge, even 
in the world of experience with which the understanding 
deals, Kant calls them the " categories of the understand- 
ing." There are twelve of these logical forms of the 

reason, three severally having to do with each 
Sesof^ife" °^ ^ our different judgments of the understand- 
imderstaud- mg Thus i where the understanding finds 

quantity in the matter of our experience, the 
pure reason supplies the logical form of unity, plurality, 



PANTHEISM. 121 

or totality; where the understanding finds quality, the 
rational form of reality, negation, or limitation will be 
present ; where the understanding finds relation, reason 
compels that lower faculty to see what it finds under the 
form of substance, cause, or reciprocity; and where the 
understanding discovers modality, there is present the 
a-priori form of possibility, existence, or necessity. These 
are the categories of empirical knowledge, all coming from 
that mental realm which is above exj)erience, and all 
proved by the infallible test of necessity and universality. 

But not only are these regulative principles 
thus furnished in all our empirical knowledge. ' Jeason° f the 
Besides the categories of the understanding, 
there are what Kant calls the Ideas of the reason. The 
existence of those ideas is proved just as that of the logi- 
cal forms was : all men have them, and no one can help 
having them. Though coming from the same transcen- 
dental source as the judgments of the understanding, they 
yet differ from them, in that they are not susceptible of a 
synthesis with any matter of actual knowledge. There is 
no possibility of applying them to anything else. They 
stand alone, pure and simple, cognizable only as ideas in 
their own peculiar sphere, and defying all attempts to 
actualize them elsewhere. These ideas of the reason are 
three in number : (1.) that of the Soul, which 
is the basis of rational psychology; (2.) that of ^f e hatthey 
the World, which is the basis of rational cos- 
mology ; (3.) that of God, which is the basis of rational 
theology. Neither one of these ideas has anything to do 
with objective reality, but they are all framed by the rea- 
son, with the consciousness that no object anywhere an- 



122 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

swers to them. They are purely transcendental. They 
remain the peculiar possession of the reason which gave 
birth to them. Their presence within us is inevitable, what- 
ever our experience, of which they are independent. They 
go with us, and are pre-supposed in all our investigations ; 
yet they can never be brought down, and made a part of 
the subject-matter of our inquiries. They stand by them- 
selves, isolated, purely subjective; they involve nothing 

corresponding to them in the actual world. It 
Svenature. " * s :in ^ e ^- world, an ideal soul, an ideal and 

subjective God in which they force us to believe. 
Neither one of these ideas is anything but a regulative 
principle within the province of the reason itself, and we 
are cheated with the emptiest possible of illusions if we 
believe them to involve any reality beyond themselves. 
We are compelled to entertain the idea of a God, yet this 
idea furnishes no ground for the belief that God actually 
exists. While on the one hand it pursues us, and will not 
let us escape, on the other hand, it equally refuses to go 
beyond us, or let us pass behind it. It forevermore fol- 
lows us as an ideal, but we are forbidden to hope that we 
may ever behold it as actual and real. 

Now, it may well be asked, at least so far as 

Where this . ■ 

Critique the most precious beliefs of the human race are 

leaves us. 

. concerned, whether the Critique of Kant is a whit 
more valuable than the Essay of Locke. Had it revealed 
a new region of truth? Yes, but that truth had no objec- 
tive validity; it was purely subjective and ideal. Did the 
sage of Konigsberg close the door against Hume's scepti- 
cism? Yes, but in doing so he had opened a door of 
blank idealism, from which, as we shall see, the step was 



PANTHEISM. 123 

easy into pantheism. The thinking world was rescued 
from one source of infidelity only to be exposed to 
another. Once more philosophers turned from sensuous 
impressions, and began to build on the intuitions of the 
reason; but they only'exchanged Hume for Spinoza; they 
recoiled from the rock to be drawn back into the whirl- 
pool. "We see distinctly," says Chalybaaus, "how near 
Kant was to expressing himself in the manner to which 
Hegel, at a far later period, found himself constrained, 
when on the same path of inquiry : the absolute God is 
the mere essence which is thinking and thought of, because 
it is that in us which thinks ; thinking is identical with 
what is thought; the absolute is the thinking process 
itself. Thus the ontological proof can succeed only upon 
the basis of an absolute idealism, or idealistic pantheism." 
But it would be wrong to infer that Kant in- 

-. , , , , . ... t Kant's plan 

tended any such result as that now indicated, broader than 

this sphere 

At least we must presume, in simple justice to of therea- 
him, that he saw beyond it another result of a 
positive nature, to be reached by a different path of in- 
quiry. He certainly leaves the ground of a solid theism, 
even if he does not tread on the edge of pantheism, when 
he says that, "for aught we can tell, the unknown base of 
mind and matter, despite their divergent phenomena, may 
be the same." But he was no pantheist. It was contrary 
to his plan, as conceived from the first, to allow his sub- 
jective idealism to absorb the whole material of philos- 
ophy. As Chalybasus justly says, and as we shall soon 
see, he could not consent to that line of argument in ref- 
erence to the infinite God, when he came to lay the basis 
of our ethical action, and of a practical theology. If, on 



124 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

the one hand, he had shown the inadequateness of the 
empiricism of Locke, and on the other hand had struck a 
blow at the ontology of Anselm and Descartes, it did 
not therefore follow that he meant to subvert the great 
truths of the soul, a world-system, and a supreme God. 
They were indeed subverted, and could by no means 
be proved true, on the ground of the speculative rea- 
Another son > but Kant had in view another faculty 
faculty. Q £ ^q human mind, held back thus far in his 
reasoning, which he now brings forward as a means of 
proving the objective validity of those truths. He had 
not imperilled them at all, as the case stood to his view, 
for the Practical Reason was that on which he had relied 
from the beginning to establish their absolute verity. His 
Critique of the Practical Reason was, as has been charged, 
the life-boat in which he escaped from the wreck made by 
his Critique of the Pure Reason. Yet it should be remem- 
bered that he had the wreck in view from the outset, and 
planned the boat with reference to that emergency, regard- 
ing it himself, whatever others may think, as an abler and 
far more important work than the one published before it. 
Having shown that the realm of ontology cannot be reached 
by way of pure intelligence, he undertakes to open a way 
into that sublime region upon an ethical basis. The moral 
nature of man, in distinction from the purely rational, is 
the ladder on which he may feel himself ascending and 
descending. The law of our moral nature, 

Function of 

the Practical its Thou shalt and Thou shalt not, Kant calls 

Reason. 

" the categorical imperative." This voice of 
command in conscience is just as universal, and just as 
necessary, as any idea of the speculative reason ; and it is 



PANTHEISM. 125 

something which, in order to its own integrity, must be 
realized in experience ; and therefore it carries us back of 
itself to a self-determining soul, and up to a divine execu- 
tioner, thus planting our foot "upon the unconditioned, 
absolute, or intelligible world." This categorical impera- 
tive, which issues forth from the practical reason, looks 
only to its own actualization, regardless of such ends as 
happiness, beneficence, and reward ; and it establishes the 
otherwise unproved being of a supreme God, since it is 
upon no less a basis than this that its autocracy can be 
upheld. Xow, if Kant had simply meant, in this reasoning, 
to give us the usual moral argument of theologians, all 
would have been well enough. Then he would 

, , , , i ( » i Result not 

have come clearly out upon the ground ot the satisfac- 

. . . tory. 

intuitional philosophy, and might have affirmed, 
as the truest of all truths, that conviction of man which 
he says is t; not to be called a true knowledge and cognition, 
but only a belief." Yet such a step, evidently, would have 
placed him in open antagonism with the doctrines of the 
speculative reason ; and even as the matter stood, such a 
conflict was apparent to others, though not to himself. If 
his first Critique was to stand, as its immense popularity 
had already insured, then must the intelligible world be 
readied, not by the outward pathway of our moral nature, 
but by bringing it into the ideas of reason, and in some 
way identifying it with the processes of rational thought. 
At least this was the method which the leading minds of 
Germany, in their efforts to know the absolute, were deter- 
mined to adopt. However conclusive Kant's argument 
may have seemed to himself, for them it had an air of con- 
straint, and was so much weaker than what had gone 



126 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

before it as to retain no steady hold upon them. It gave 
the thinking principle no outlet, which pure science could 
recognize as adequate. The circle of knowledge which it 
had begun could be completed only by merging the objec- 
tive and subjective in one pantheistic result. 

Kant was evidently troubled by the charge 

Critique of „,. f . , , , . , ., 

the jucig oi schism which was brought against his philoso- 

ment. , 

phy, and he firmly believed that he could show 
the essential harmony of his system without accepting the 
alternative of Spinozism. He was himself the first to 
attempt a reconciliation of his ethics with his metaphysics 
— an attempt which we need not discredit as a mere after- 
thought, but may regard as part of his original plan. He 
claimed that the real and ideal elements of his philosophy 
could be united on a common basis, thus making one com- 
plete whole. That this union of the two principles might 
take place he sought to show in a third Work, — his Critique 
of the Judgment, containing his Esthetics and Doctrine 
of Final Causes. The object of this work was to fix the 
central principle of a Kantian school of philosophy. I 
can give no account of it hefe, except to say that it was a 
kind of bridge whereby his realistic or empirical doctrines 
were brought over to his idealism, — not to retain their inde- 
pendent life, but to be overmastered and devoured. A few 
of his disciples tried, for a short time, to stand upon this 
middle ground, holding in equilibrium the two antagonistic 

Critiques. But no one was able to keep the 

Its object 

not at- position lonof. The dualism of the Kantian 

tained. L * 

philosophy was what struck men as its most 
obvious trait. They failed to see the new foundation, 
and felt that only another crisis had been reached in the 



PANTHEISM. 127 

history of thinking. Idealism and empiricism, they con- 
tended, could not be brought together into an harmonious 
system, and each at the same time preserve its own integ- 
rity. The question with them therefore was, which should 
fall before the other. And the question was not a very 
hard one to decide. When a meteor is revolving midway 
between the sun and the nearest planet, we know to which 
body it must ultimately come. The distance being the 
same on either hand, the attraction must be as the mass 
of matter. The little finger of Kant's idealism, whatever 
he thought of it, was, in its impression on other minds, 
thicker than the loins of his empiricism. As often as they 
met in fair encounter, the latter was sure to go to the wall. 
"The two principles," says Chalybaeus, "were still held 
dualistically together. We could, while arriving through 
the reason at absolute unity, either acknowledge the one 
idealistic principle to be the genuine root of all knowledge, 
and abide subjectively by this alone, or we could in turn 
make empiricism, and consequently a multitude of objective 
beginnings and principles, the point of our departure." * 

Whether I have now succeeded in giving any Three dig 
correct impressions of Kant's system or not, it is SJndea'fci 
at least clear that three distinct schools of Kant " 
thought might proceed from him. Directly before him 
was the path indicated by his Critique of the Judgment, in 
which Reinhold and Fries tried to go forward ; on the one 
hand was his realism, which Jacobi and Herbart pursued, 
though from opposite sides, and on the other hand was his 
idealism, which Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel carried out to 

1 History of Speculative Philosophy, p. 57. 



128 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

its extreme results. The last of these three paths will 
chiefly claim our notice, though something should be said 
of the other two. 

Of those who tried to hold the middle course, 

Reinhold. 

seeking a principle which should mediate be- 
tween the real and the ideal, Carl Leonhard Reinhold 
deserves to be first named. Chalybaeus intimates that 
Fries was the more earnest in advocating Kant's centre- 
theory ; but of the few sentences devoted to them both, 
almost all have reference to Reinhold. Under his treatment 
the ^Esthetics of Kant becomes a representation, oscillating 
between the subject and the object, in which their essential 
unity is to be found. This representation being one of the 
data of consciousness, he is led by it to speak of the im- 
portance of an examination of that faculty. This work he 
never undertook himself, but it became a fruitful subject 
under the treatment of other thinkers, especially in the 
hands of Fichte, to whose views Reinhold gradually in- 
clined." x 

I shall attempt no statement here of the views 

Jacobi. 

of Herbart, who developed strongly the empiri- 
cal side of the Kantian realism, and shall speak only of 
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who, while starting from the 
same point as Herbart, leaned towards idealism in his think- 
ing. He was one of the noblest men of his time. We are 
charmed by his character, as it comes out both in his writ- 
ings and his daily life. Yet the tendency of his mind was 

towards a certain mystical quietism. He pur- 

His mysti- _ 

caiten- sued the image of truth, not outward by way 

. of the understanding and senses, but inward 

i Morell, p. 178. 



PANTHEISM. 129 

till caught in the subjective idealism of Kant, where he 
gave up the chase, and asserted that our conviction of - 
reality is a thing to be reverently accepted, but which no 
one should dare attempt to account for. "All our knowl- 
edge," he says, " must rest ultimately on faith, and not on 
reasoning." His system has been aptly termed a Faith- 
Philosophy. Starting with the demands of our moral 
nature, and holding, with Kant, that they involve in each 
instance an actual world, human freedom, and a supreme 
God, he argued that an objective result might be similarly 
reached in the sphere of pure knowledge. "Has not 
Kant," he asked, " adopted the matter-of-fact existence of 
the ideas in his practical philosophy, and regarded them as 
being the ultimate and most certain point ? Does he not 
here content himself, and rightly, with letting the matter- 
of-fact existence of the moral law (the so-called Aro . ues 
categorical imperative) hold good as the most Kant? first 
irrefragable of all ? If he did this in the theory critique - 
of the practice, how could he presume to do directly the 
reverse in the theory of knowledge ? Why should that 
which in the former case was irrefragable count for nothing 
in the latter ? " 1 These questions are certainly well put, 
and, as addressed to Kant himself, they cannot be answered. 
But they made almost no impression on German thinkers, 
for they assumed the correctness of that side of Kant's 
system which was regarded as a mistake and an ex- 
crescence. The speculative tendency of the times, taking 
the Critique of the Pure Reason for its gospel, was not 
satisfied with a theory which made faith, or mere feeling, 
the ultimate basis of all knowledge. .It demanded that 

i Chalybaeus. 

9 



130 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 



The thinkers 



the ideas of freedom, a world, and a God, be 
not 'with™ 6 k rou ght forth from their concealment in the 
hlm * misty depths of feeling, to undergo scientific 

study. There was no sanctuary into which the torch of 
knowledge might not be thus carried ; no veil on the 
image of truth which the hand of inquiry might not dare 
to lift. Jacobi stood almost alone in asserting that the 
three great ideas of the reason are an awful treasure in 
the depths of the human consciousness; in refusing to 
sound those depths by the scientific method ; in his dread 
of Spinozism, to which he foresaw that such an investiga- 
tion must lead. An extract from the famous conversation 
of Jacobi and Lessing, at their first meeting in 1784, will 

help to make this point clear. Lessing had no 

The meeting .. .. 

with Les- dread 01 the results 01 idealism, and made 

sing'. 

haste to say, as soon as he found occasion, " The 
orthodox ideas concerning God are no longer mine. I 
have no pleasure in them now. ''Ev xai nav, One and All, I 
know nothing but this." Jacobi' s reply is, "Then are you 
greatly at one with Spinoza." To this Lessing rejoins, " Did 
I rank myself with any one, it were with none but him.". 
Whereupon Jacobi says, " Spinoza is well enough ; yet is 
it but a sorry kind of healing that we find in his name." x 

This partial agreement with Spinoza, which Jacobi gave 
at different times, led his opponents to charge him with 
timidity. They said that he lacked the scientific spirit, in 
refusing to push on to the logical goal of his admissions, 

holding himself back through fear of offending 
ot h Jac C obi. tn e orthodox party. However this may have 

been, no one questioned the goodness of his 

i Willis's Life, &c, of Spinoza, p. 152. 



PANTHEISM. 131 

character, or failed to be charmed by the beauty with 
which he expressed his deep and suggestive thoughts. 
His style was said to be like Plato's ; and many, who 
could not rest in his intellectual quietism, yet studied his 
works with confessed profit and delight. Hegel, whom no 
dread of pantheism kept from working out scientifically 
the contents of his consciousness, says of Jacobi, " He is 
like a solitary thinker, who, in the morning of his day, 
found some ancient riddle hewn upon an eternal rock. 
He believes in this riddle, but he strives in vain to guess 
it. He carries it about with him the whole day, allures 
weighty sentiments from it, spreads it out into 
doctrines and images, which delight the hearer, SiScEm. 
and inspire him with noble wishes and hopes : 
but the interpretation fails ; and in the evening he lays 
him down, with the hope that some divine dream, or the 
next waking, will pronounce to him ''the word"* for which 
he longs, and on which he has so firmly believed." ] This 
beautiful system of faith-philosophy did not start from 
that side of Kantism which was most complete, and which 
most powerfully affected the speculative mind of Ger- 
many. The realism of Jacobi, like the seven goodly ears 
of corn in Pharaoh's dream, sprang forth only to be de- 
voured up by the hungry idealism of Fichte, Schelling, 
and Hegel. 

Fichte, wholly discrediting that side of Kantism to 
which Jacobi clung, seized with a powerful 

_ _ . , , . _ „ 1 r Fichte. 

grasp the doctrine that the ideas of the reason 

have respect only to themselves. Laying this down as 

the grand premise, from which all true philosophy must 

1 Hegel's Miscellanies, quoted by Morell, p. 602. 



132 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

be deduced, he did not fear to push on to the logical 
result. The human consciousness — that is, his own self- 
conscious thought-activity — is his starting-point. This 
thinking process is, in the first instance, the veritable Ego ; 
nor does it presuppose any essence or substance, such as 
is commonly understood by the word soul ; and to it, 
whether considered as infinite or finite, all knowl- 
actidfy the ec *g e * s strictly limited. Beyond the simple 
abiJthinJ." thought-activity, there is nothing real. The 
images and sensations which constitute its ma- 
terial, and which are imprisoned within the consciousness, 
cannot be traced to any external origin. The whole pro- 
cess is purely subjective; in no sense from without, but 
altogether a creation of the Ego itself. Fichte coul'd not 
believe that Kant was, in any honest sense, a realist ; nor 
was he willing to give up this opinion till Kant publicly 
protested against it. But Fichte went on. Of all the 
advocates of subjective idealism, he was perhaps the most 
thorough-going. He did not, in so many words, 
The non- d env the existence of the world, as his oppo- 
nents charged him with doing, but recognized it 
under the designation of the non-Ego. Yet he defines it 
not as any real thing, after all, but as only that conscious- 
ness of limitation which the Ego experiences; and he 
probably would have never conceded even this much, had 
not the criticisms of Schelling led him to qualify some of 
his earlier statements. But that he is strictly an idealist 
still, is clear from his saying, " I can absolutely know noth- 
ing beyond what is present within me." Our conscious- 
ness is not due to impressions made by things outside 
of it, but the thinking process itself creates the objects 



PANTHEISM. 133 

with which it is concerned. Having himself 
posited the object of this thought, a man cannot ^h° dl E*o 
say that he holds a passive relation to it, or that 
the Ego of which he is conscious is its effect'; for the ob- 
ject itself is rather the effect of the thinking process. 1 
There are certain images and sensations, going to make 
the consciousness in any case, but to seek an external ori- 
gin for them is to quit the track of true science; just so 
far as they reach the standard of scientific knowledge, 
they are a. part of the thinking process itself. " The be- 
ing, the objective reality, can be for us merely a being that 
is thought ; a thought reality, thought by us, and conse- 
quently in this sense self-produced." Thus it is, in strict 
fidelity to Kant's first position, that the theoretical is 
made to lay hold of the practical and wholly absorb it. 
Consciousness is the source of all knowledge, and this is 
limited to its own processes; hence beyond consciousness 
there can be no knowledge, but pure guess-work only. If 
we say that the soul may know itself, yet that soul can- 
not be a substance, but only a thinking process ; and be- 
yond the play of this self-conscious thought-activity there 
is no demonstrable truth. 

It is not necessary to go any farther into Fichte's doc- 
trine of science, to see that it j)laces him on the edge of a 
precipice. He can no longer be said to occupy 
the ground of the ordinary theist ; the only al- Sveofathe- 
ternative before him is atheism or pantheism. thSsm Pan " 
The outward world being to him simply an 
image projected from himself, he could not rise from it to 
a Creator, as do those who hold it to be an objective real- 

-■> 

i Chalybfeus, p. 155. 



134 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ity. The thinking process is the creator, "being that 
operation which mirrors itself in each of its acts ; " and 
if this be not absolute, there is no absolute. For a time 
Fichte's utterances were thought to incline towards the 
atheistic side of the alternative; so much so 
atheism ° f tnat ne was f° rce d to resign his chair of philos- 
ophy at Jena. To meet the odious charges thus 
raised against him, he gave a new direction to his 
thoughts, though by no means changing his theory of 
knowledge. He affirms that the Ego itself, viewed under 
its transcendental aspect, is the Absolute One. "This, 
then, is the sum and substance of our belief," he says. 
" The living and active moral order is God ; we need ho 
other God, and can comprehend no other." If we suppose 
a personal God in the usual way, we are guilty .of anthro- 
pomorphism; mere imitators of the ancient Greeks, who 
enthroned their own inrperfections on Olympus. " God is 
not a being or existence," says he, " any more than man is ; 
" but a pure action, i. e., the life and soul of a transcendent 
world-order." It is at this point, being hard pressed by 
the speculations of Schelling, that he turns 
pantheist! 1 back from the atheistic path, and makes choice 
of pantheism. Every human consciousness be- 
ing an Ego, there is, consequently, as viewed from the 
empirical side, an infinite number of these. Yet viewed 
from the transcendental side, they are all but the make-up 
of one absolute Ego — a universal self-consciousness, 
which is the single divine reality amid all that appears. 
"We, as intelligent essences, are, in respect to what we are 
in ourselves, by no means that absolute Being," says 
Fichte ; " but we are connected with it by the innermost 



PANTHEISM. 135 

root of our existence, since apart from it we could not be 
or exist." This language is not meant to assert, as it 
seems to do, that Fichte held the absolute to 
be an essence or substance in the sense of Spi- spiuoza. 
noza. The universal activity, the absolute think- 
ing process, is all that he affirms. Spinoza's God was a 
substance in the proper sense, and thought one of its infi- 
nite attributes ; Fichte's God is that attribute, and he 
denies that there is any reality besides it. Spinoza was 
intoxicated with his absolute substance ; Fichte loses him- 
self in his absolute process. 

It is our highest wisdom, he teaches us, to The true 
know this only God ; to forget the Ego in so far as wisdom, 
it is empirical, and behold it as the transcendental reality 
filling all things. " So long as ever man yearns to be any- 
thing, God does not come to him, for no man can become 
God. So soon, however, as he purely and radically anni- 
hilates himself, God alone remains, and is all in all. Man 
cannot engender God, but he can annihilate himself as the 
true negation, and then he sinks or relapses into God. 
He has no fear for the future, for the absolutely Blessed 
guides him towards it ; he has notfepentance over the past, 
for in so far as he was not in God he was nothing, and the 
past is now past, and for the first time since his reception 
into the Deity is he born unto life ; in so far, however, 
as he was in God, is that right and good which he has 
done." x 

We may say, then, that the a-priori philosophy, reinstated 
and more strictly defined by Kant, had, in the hands of 
Fichte, vitalized the pantheism of Spinoza. If the distinc- 

1 Quoted by Chalybaeus, pp. 182, 183. 



136 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Fichte's tive feature of Spinozism was rest, that of 
considered Fichte's system is activity. Yet while insisting 

on this dynamical life of the absolute, he ban- 
ished from it all containing substance. This it was the 

aim of Schelling to bring back. And it is a 

Schelling. . & & 

striking comment on the history of human 
speculation, that these two men, after all who had pre- 
ceded them in their school of thought, could only leave 
the great problem so nearly where Spinoza had left it a 
century and a half before. 

Schelling begins by objecting to Fichte, and 

Grand ob- 

jection to that with great force, that the bare process of 

Fichte. .... 

thinking is in no proper sense of the word 
knoioledge. There must be some real matter or essence 
involved in the process, which our thoughts can separate 
from it ; something around it, beneath it, or within it, which 
is to our minds as really objective as *the thought-process 

is subjective. Knowledge can begin only when 
doctrineof our thinking has found something which it did 

knowledge. . . l . 

not originate. Thus tar Schellmg is on the sure 
grounds of our primary beliefs. But he is possessed by 
the German madness fit the absolute one, the monistic 
all-in-all. The real content of our thinking becomes, with 
him, only an integrant portion of the one noumenon, which 
mirrors itself forth not only in our thinking but in all phe- 
nomena. Not the human ego, therefore, even when con- 
sidered as a substance, but the absolute Ego which 

underlies and constitutes it, is the true a-priori 

HowSchel- r 

ling reaches conception. At this point all true philosophy 

the position L l r r j 

of the pan- must begin. This essence may be contemplated 
in itself, and as apart from the thought-process, 



PANTHEISM. 137 

when it is the object ; or it may be contemplated as enter- 
ing and filling that process, when it is the subject. It may 
therefore be properly named the subject-object. Call it 
by what name you please, — nature, God, noumenon, abso- 
lute reality, infinite one, — it is that in which our thinking 
and the content of our thought are one and the same thing 
to consciousness ; and therefore the scientific treatment of 
it is truly styled the Identity-Philosophy. Pantheists are 
fond of repeating Schelling's celebrated remark, that " all 
difference is quantitative." This assertion of the one, and 
of the identity of all things in it, is a complete rendering 
of the doctrine of Spinoza. It is pantheism crowded into 
a single sentence. The following quotation will perhaps 
place before us the Schellingian doctrine, so- far as de- 
manded by the present inquiry: "The multiplicity of 
determinations is not evoked in us by the influence of 
manifold external objects or things in themselves, but it is 
the birth or product of the potential fulness of our nature. 
It is, really and truly, the universal world-nature 
which here acts in me, as in one of her innumer- desc^ed™ 
able points, as well as everywhere else ; and on 
that account we have an immediate knowledge of this 
nature ; or, more correctly speaking, it is the universal 
nature, that here within us knows something of or perceives 
itself, — the nature which has organized itself into human 
souls, into humanity, and by means of these its organs 
cognizes itself. We human beings are, as it were, but the 
innumerable individual eyes through which the infinite 
world-spirit regards itself. We are real or actual as regards 
our internal essence ; that which is imaginary and unsubstan- 



138 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

tial in us is the absolute personality with which the indi- 
vidual natters himself." * 

It is therefore plain, if language can make 

Agreement 

with Spi- anything plain, that Schelling's Identity is the 

Substance, and his subject and object the thought 
and extension, of Spinoza. If he has improved at- all upon 
his master, it is by giving heed to the words of Fichte ; 
that is, by emphasizing the inherent activity of his world- 
nature. He even speaks of the freedom of the subject- 
object. But Spinoza insisted that the one substance is 
free. Yet here is no real liberty of will asserted, in the 
former case more than in the latter. The freedom of God, 
as understood by both these thinkers, is simply that auto- 
matic power of action which pertains to the universal con- 
sciousness. This essential activity has three distinct 

manifestations ; three potences Schelling calls 
potences. them. The first of these is the potence of 

" reflection ; " that is, the movement by which 
the infinite and absolute seeks to mirror itself forth in finite 
phenomena. The second is the potence of " subsumption ; " 
that is, the effort which the absolute makes to return from 
a mere phenomenal, back into its essential mode of being. 
The third is the potence of " reason ; " that is, the act by 
which the absolute recognizes itself as indifferently present, 
and forever one and the same, in the other two move- 
ments. 

But this is not all. The first double move- 
wSkhTthe ment of the absolute, in trying to realize itself, 
of°epirit? indicates two distinct lines of evolution, which 

it forever follows. Nature and spirit are these 

i Chalybaeus, p. 204. 



PANTHEISM. 139 

lines ; these directions of the absolute, in its self-evolution 
through the three potences. And in each branch of this 
twofold evolution there are three successive stages, called 
sjjheres, in which the threefold movement forever goes 
forward. I will not attempt to give the whole scheme of 
development, as thus foreshadowed, but only some faint 
glimpse of it as it occurs in the department of spirit. 1 
Here the three potences give, in the first sphere, which is 
that of knowing, feeling, reflection, and freedom. In the 
second sphere, which is that of action, they give individu- 
ality, the state, history. The third sphere in the domain 
of spirit is genius, and in this the three potences blend, 
constituting the noblest evolution of which the one essence 
of all things is capable. Within the sphere of genius the 
threefold movement of the absolute, thus blended into a 
single state of consciousness, becomes the inspiration of 
finite intelligence. To its presence and action, being indeed 
but another name for itself, all fresh inventions and achieve- 
ments which excite our wonder are due. In religion, 
philosophy, and poetry, also, those discoveries which carry 
the horizon of the soul abroad, or fill it anew with pure 
and sublime thoughts, are but the three potences of the 
absolute, blending in the one movement which constitutes 
genius, and thereby carrying itself up nearer to that point 
of perfect realization which it never attains. 

The difference between nature and man, ac- 
cording to Schelling, is one of degree rather be\weeu° n 
than kind, so that the two spheres in which the TpMt? and 
world-essence is evolved are less unlike than we 
might at first think. The same absolute, as the following 

i The whole subject is treated by Morell, pp. 433-456. 



140 HALF TETJTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

extract will show, fills them both. "With the stars is 
inborn the most exalted number and geometry, which they 
execute in their movements without any notion of such 
plan. More distinctly, though still incomprehensibly to 
themselves, appears the living perception in animals, whom 
we see, though wandering here and there without delibera- 
tion, to perform countless works far nobler than them- 
selves ; the bird, intoxicated with music, excelling itself in 
tones that are full of soul ; the small, art-gifted creature, 
without practice or instruction, producing light works of 
architecture ; but guided by a superior spirit, which already 
shines in single flashes of intelligence, but nowhere comes 
forth as a full sun except in man." x Man, as we thus see, 
is the true wonder-worker. In him alone is genius ; in 
him alone, that is, the immanent absolute so realizes itself, 
in the blending of the three potences, as to be an inspira- 
tion. Thus it is, as Schelling does not hesitate to say, that 
we have the Homers and Isaiahs, the Platos and the 
Pauls, of history. Even the recognized God-man himself, 
who came forth in heavenly beauty among the hills of 
Galilee, was but the one world-essence, rising into the form 
of genius, and moving amid bright visions which its own 

magic had cast. It was the identity of the living 
nn^fouiV finite with the living infinite, in his conscious- 
ChrisSanity. ness, that made him the founder of the sublimest 

of all religions. That same identity may be 
traced wherever there is genius, though showing itself in 
less noble displays. There is no supra-mundane Creator ; 
no God who sitteth upon the circle of the earth. Accord- 
ing to Schelling, says Mr. Morell, "all difference between 

1 Eelation of the Plastic Arts to Nature, quoted by Chalybaeus, p. 251. 



PANTHEISM. 141 

God and the universe was entirely lost; his pantheism 
becomes as complete as that of Spinoza ; and as the abso- 
lute was evolved from its lowest forms to the highest, in 
accordance with the necessary law or rhythm of its being, 
the whole world, material and mental, became one enor- 
mous chain of necessity, to which no idea of free creation 
could by any possibility be attached." 1 The doctrine of a 
supernatural Creator, as Schelling viewed the case, leaves 
the creation a piece of dead mechanism. God is in his 
works; is himself their essence, their life, their 
soul ; his immanence is their mystery, his ema- o^lche"* 
nence their glory. Thus is the mighty problem J 1 ^ 8 sys " 
of the universe solved, thought Schelling. All 
is but the eternal ebb and flow of the one absolute sub- 
stance; and without this no man, no nature, no God is 
possible or conceivable. 

It is remarkable how soon this school of pantheism 
came to an end. Fichte died only ten years after Kant ; 
and Hegel, who stands last and highest in the 

, , . , , . , Short con- 

succession, was but eight years younger than tinuanceof 
Fichte. Schelling outlived them all, and in his of panthe- 
old age sought to reinstate his system, which 
had already fallen into decay. The rise, growth, and 
downfall of this whole vaunted system of philosophy cov- 
ered a period of only about fifty years. Kant, as we saw, 
was assailed with charges of dualism, and failed to rest 
his speculations on any satisfactory middle-ground. Fichte 
also, feeling the inadequacy of his earlier views, sought to 
modify them later in life. And so of Schelling. He did 
not seem to see the revolutionary tendency of his thinking 

1 Modern Philosophy, p. 448. 



142 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

till the mischief had been done. As a logician, he was 
faulty. He did not possess the philosophical temperament 
in large measure. He clothed his speculations in the 
language of poetry, rather than in that of metaphysics. 
There are passages in his works to which the language of 

Edgar A. Poe, in his Essay on the Material and 
and Edgar Spiritual Universe, bears a striking likeness. 

Poe called his essay a Prose Poem ; and it is a 
notable instance of the power of a pantheistic imagination. 
The Eureka of Poe is the subject-object of Schelling. 

Nor did Schelling seem to be aware of the de- 
in U He 1 »ei ted structive tendency of his doctrine, till Hegel's 

logic compelled him to see it. 
The labors of Hegel are a lesson forever to all the 
friends of truth, that the surest way of overcoming error 

is to let it clearly state itself. Tolerance of 
refutation opinion is an effective method of opposing wrong 

of errorists . . „,. . . n .. _ 

clear state- opinions. Hie human mind was made for truth ; 

ment. 

and it instinctively recoils from error, when that 
error is clearly defined to it. The complete overthrow of 
pantheism by its especial champion is a signal instance of 
this. He showed clearly, and in all its practical bearings, 
what the system was. This was enough. It needed no 
other refutation. Bellerophon carried on himself the let- 
ter which condemned him. There was a general recoil of 
the better class of minds. Hegelians sought to show that 
their master had been misunderstood. Schelling was 
drawn from his retirement, to prove, if possible, that his 
doctrine, at least in its moral and political bearings, differed 
from the extreme views imputed to Hegel. But he at- 
tempted an impossible thing. The darkness had come to 



PANTHEISM. 143 

the light, and been reproved. Men saw what it was, in 
its practical tendencies. Dreading the social chaos it legit- 
imated, they cast from them its glittering bands ; and the 
reign once broken, there was no power by which it could 
be restored. 

Is it not a little discreditable to our Anglo-Saxon intel- 
lect, that a theory which the best minds of Germany had 
repudiated should, more than a generation after, have been 
the boasted faith of so many English and Amer- 
ican writers? Is it worthy of men claiming to ™nism Ch ~ 
be thinkers, to make so much of that which has 
been overthrown in the country of its birth ? to be like 
that class of paupers who come around to the back doors 
of our houses, to gather into their baskets the stale pieces 
of bread and meat which the family cook has been or- 
dered to throw away ? But the friends of truth, surely, 
need have no fear of an enemy which is dead at the heart. 
The claws of the tiger may continue to feel after his 
prey, although the fatal shot of the hunter has brought 
him to the ground. This movement of the extremities is 
but spasmodic, however. That which has ceased to be 
alive at the core must soon give up the ghost altogether. 

Hegel was a trained logician. He possessed 
the philosophical temperament to an eminent 
degree. He had that cool fearlessness, so remarkable in 
Spinoza, which shrinks from no logical result of the prem- 
ises laid down. It is said that he studied the works of 
Spinoza with the utmost enthusiasm, caring but little, in 
comparison, for what had been achieved by other modern 
thinkers. He saw in the subject-object of Schelling the 
substance of Spinoza. From this he dropped out the 



144 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

objective element, as that whose existence was the same 
as its non-existence, and the subjective process 
hrteidea." which remained he called the Absolute Idea. 
The nature of this idea he undertook to ex- 
pound, or to show how it unfolds itself, from a primary 
being which is non-being, to an ultimate being which is 
also non-being. This part of his system is the Hegelian 
logic. Kant had discovered, in connection with his cat- 
egories, certain contradictions which he named 
Use of ° 

Kant's an- antinomies / that is, it was possible, from dif- 

tinomies. 

ferent data, to prove direct opposites in regard 
to the same thing. But he applied this law of contradic- 
tories only in the sphere of natural philosophy. Hegel, 
seizing hold of this Kantian principle, claimed that it w^as 
universally applicable, and made it the comprehensive law 
of his logic. These antagonisms were only for the under- 
standing, however; the reason beholds steadily that higher 
unity into which they are constantly rising. His whole 

system of logic is therefore a triplicate process. 
movement! As described by Professor H. B. Smith, " There 

is first a statement expressed in the positive 
form ; then there follows the negation of the position ; 
and then the two contradictory statements are resolved 
into a higher unity. And so the system proceeds, from 
stage to stage, — positive, negative, and the union between 
the positive and negative. This union becomes in turn a 
positive, a negative is set over against it, and this new 
contradiction is resolved into another and higher unity." 1 

But the Hegelian dialectics are not simply logic, in the 
usual abstract sense of the word. A vital movement is 

i Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. II. p. 274. 



PAXTHEISM. 145 

everywhere intended. The recognition of the absolute 
idea, under its threefold aspect, constitutes in nature Nat- 
ural philosophy. Here we are conscious of a 
"becoming," answering to Spinoza's infinite at- Jhio^Jphy. 
tribute of extension. This nature-movement, 
throughout all its stages, conforms to the fixed logical 
arrangement. It illustrates, like everything else, the pres- 
ence of the Hegelian trinity. Not only natural philos- 
ophy as a whole, but its divisions, — mechanics, physics, 
and organized bodies ; and not only these, but their sub- 
divisions and sub-subdivisions, down to the minutest rep- 
resentatives of the action of nature, conform to a single 
law. They exist only by a constant struggle of affirma- 
tions and negations, through which the reason beholds 
them rising all the while into a fuller develoj)ment and 
perfect unity. 

Not only in nature, but in mind or spirit also, the He- 
gelian trinity is everywhere present. Mind, considered 
absolutely,- was to Hegel an infinite process, not differing 
from nature in the final analysis, and corresponding to 
Spinoza's infinite attribute of thought, so far as 
an empty process may be said to correspond to ot^irlt! 17 
a substance. The true philosophy of mind or 
spirit is the exposition of the threefold movement in 
consciousness, by which it is unfolded. Our thought- 
activity affirms itself by a positive movement answering 
to Schelling's potence of reflection, and also denies that 
positive by the potence of sub-sumption ; while the rea- 
son has, in the mean time, held the two contradictories 
together in perfect union, under the higher idea of the ab- 
solute spirit. The propriety of the distinction between 
10 



146 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

nature and mind is a little hard to see, looking from the 
point of Hegel's subjective idealism ; though it enables the 
logician to reach certain facts of history which otherwise 
might seem to escape him. The absolute spirit, Hegel 
says, " is the absolute idea known and understood. The 
three stages of its development are art, religion, philos- 
ophy. Philosophy, in the system of Hegel, is the highest 
state to which the consciousness of man can be brought. 
It is not merely the union of art and religion, but it is this 
union elevated into the state of self-conscious thought." 1 

Religion, therefore, is simply one of the factors 
cS result 21 " °f a true philosophy; one of the potences of an 

absolute thought-process, which started from 
nothing and proceeds to nothing. All the knowledge of 
existence to which we can ever attain is this triplicate 
movement of the Hegelian dialectic. Being, which is the 
same thing as non-being, lies behind us and before us. 
From it we came, and to it we hasten, by a process of 
constant " becoming," the law of which is the universal 
logic, and which constitutes all that we distinguish as 
God, man, and nature. God, for instance, is first thought 
into being ; but this thought is completed only in the con- 
tradictory thought of non-being, the two opposites so 
uniting as to give rise to the pure idea of a "becoming." 
This is the only existence in the case, and it is the product 
of the dialectic movement; therefore, exclaims the auda- 
cious logician, " I have created God." 

The following is related as occurring between Kant and 
Hegel. In an argument one day, Hegel had been con- 
tending that what we call the outward reality is never 

i Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. II. p. 285. 



PANTHEISM. 147 

anything but the idea which we have of it. 
The thinking process posites the object. Kant Uaut. 1 and 
could not accept this, for he believed in a real 
external world; and he replied to Hegel, with great 
shrewdness, "There is considerable difference ^between 
having a hundred dollars and thinking you have them." 
But the absolute idealist was not at all confused. Draw- 
ing himself up with proud disdain, he met his opponent 
on common ground, and effectually silenced him, saying, 
"Your poor empirical dollars are things with which phi- 
losophy does not concern itself." 1 No argument, or ridi- 
cule, could move him from his conclusion, that the only 
real existence is a self-moved process out of nothing into 
nothing. 

Plainly, then, no written revelation, or pos- 

Consequen- 

itive system of worship ; no political, social, or ces of the 
domestic institution, can hold its own a moment 
in the sweep of this all-consuming philosophy. Polythe- 
ism, monotheism, Christianity, the instant they touch it, 
melt like wax in the furnace. Strauss brings the 

... Strauss. 

story of Jesus of Nazareth within its reach, and 
straightway that beautiful life and sacrifice are licked up 
by its tongue of fire. Schleiermacher exposes 
to it the doctrines of theology built up by Sf ierma " 
mighty minds through the slow ages, and in- 
stantly, like the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, they are 
slain. It would be pleasant to feel sure that the trans- 



1 The following passage (Logic, Chap. I., C.) would go far to sustain this 
anecdote: " Being and non-being are the same thing; also it is the same thing 
whether I am or am not, whether this house is or is not, whether these hun- 
dred dollars are in my possession or are not." 



148 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

lator of Plato, and the great Berlin preacher who had 
such j^ower to lift the minds of men up into heavenly 
realms of truth, escaped from the abyss of pantheism into 
which he early fell. But Julius Miiller concedes as much, 
probably, as the strict truth will bear, when he says, 
" The truly Christian view of sin and redemption, which 
Schleiermacher adopts in his superstructure, is in direct 
contrast with the foundation of his theory. Firmly agree- 
ing with Schleiermacher as to the superstructure, we are 
obliged to reject the theoretic foundation of his doctrine." 1 
While thinking of the system of Spinoza as 

Net result. ° ^ l 

perfected by Hegel, and of the way in which all 
divine and human institutions, and the realities of the 
external world, vanish in its embrace, it seems to us like 
a mighty ocean, heated by the rays of a vertical sun ; 
into which the Bible, the Church, the State, history, 
nature, society, as if they were but so many tall and re- 
splendent frost-vessels, are forever moving down to melt 
out of sight, and to blend with its weary, aimless, ever 
rolling, and unfathomable waters. 

The lesson of this brief and fragmentary sur- 

Lesson of 

the survey vey of Neo-Spinozism is plain. In the midst of 

now taken. . 

the garden in which the Lord God has placed 

i The following is Sohleiermacher's eulogy of Spinoza, the first sentence of 
which I have already quoted : " Offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to 
the manes of the rejected but holy Spinoza. The great Spirit of the universe 
filled his soul; the infinite to him was beginning and end; the universal his 
sole and only love. Dwelling in holy innocence and deep humility among 
men, he saw himself mirrored in the eternal world, and the eternal world not 
all unworthily reflected back in him. Full of religion was he, full of the Holy 
Ghost; and therefore it is that he meets us standing alona in his age, raised 
above the profane multitude, master in his art, but without disciples and the 
citizen's rights." 



PANTHEISM. 149 

us, is the tree of knowledge. And the latest voice of 
history only re-echoes his own earliest word, that in the 
day we depart from him and eat of that tree, aspiring to 
know as he knoweth, we do surely die. Well does Julius 
Miiller say, " There is but One perfectly free from error 
and free from sin — Christ. He alone could lay claim to 
the faith of men in himself as one who spoke the truth, 
on the ground of his moral purity ; and he there- 
fore can pronounce judgment upon whatever Jf^Mmie* 
does not receive and harmonize with him, as a 
wandering into the paths of darkness ; he alone can ana- 
lyze its connection with a depraved bias of will. That 
which Protagoras the sophist said of man subjectively, 
that he is 'the measure of things,' is objectively true of 
the Man who is our Lord and our God. But as for us, 
seeing we are never free from sin, and are therefore con- 
tinually liable to error, it is our highest wisdom not to 
trust ourselves, still less to make ourselves the ' measure 
of things,' but to rise above ourselves to Him who alone 
is holy, and who, as he is the life, so is also the truth." l 

i Christian Doctrine of Sin, B. I., Pt. I., Chap. III. 



LECTURE IV. 

The Pantheistic Chbistology. 

The questions of philosophy are always closely 
cannot be related to those of religion. This is no more 

separated ° 

[[Son re true wnen tne relation is one of sympathy than 
when it is one of antagonism ; no more true of 
pantheism than of positivism. Even a sensuous philosophy 
opens anew the whole field of religious thought by denying 
its reality. The human mind, while gratifying its natural 
thirst for the discovery of truth, either concerns itself 
directly with the primary facts of religion, or with theories 
which involve the question of their existence. Naturalism 
does not, any more than transcendentalism, remove us 
from the realms of theism. The inevitable recoil of our 
antipathy, as surely as any direct impulse of sympathy, is 
constantly bringing us to those realms. This necessary 
connection is more apparent, however, in the case of the 
a-priori philosophy. The material on which Fichte, Schel- 
ling, and Hegel wrought, is the same as that of 
This con- Christian theology. The nature of God and all 

nection ~^ 

fest ln mam existence, and the origin and tendency of things, 

dentansm. were tne themes on which they speculated, in 

common with Augustine, Anselm, and Descartes, 

though in a different spirit. Pantheism itself is no less a 

(150) 



PANTHEISM. 151 

religion than a philosophy ; a religion to reverent and 
poetical natures, which love to look at truth through the 
haze of the affections or prism of fancy ; a philosophy to 
purely inquisitive minds, which study all subjects in the 
dry light of the intellect. 

In one view of the case, therefore, it might seem super- 
fluous to consider the attitude of pantheism towards the 
doctrines of religion. Why go on beyond it to speak of 
that which lies within itself? But we use the 
word " religion " in two senses. There is a of™ "word 
natural religion and a revealed religion ; a here!° 10n " 
subjective religion of the human conscious- 
ness, and an objective religion of authoritative precept; 
an idealistic religion, and an historical religion. It is the 
former of these that constitutes the essence of the panthe- 
istic system : what becomes of historical religion, 
under the handling of pantheism, is a question n 



which is 



still to be considered. The nature of its investi- {JJJ SjJ^e 
gations is such as to make this, almost of neces- pantheism, 
sity, our first inquiry from its point of view. If 
it is to have any development at all, if it is not to be 
forever a fountain without an outlet, it must begin to flow 
forth by this channel. Pantheism takes us through the 
whole realm of religious ideas, and claims to bring us, at 
last, to a universal solvent. If that solvent is not to lie in 
our minds unused, but to be applied to the phenomena of 
human life and society, the particular historical religion 
which we may happen to hold, will naturally be the first 
thing to come under its power. If Hegel had lived in 
China, and made disciples there as he did in Ger- 
many, his philosophy would have been applied to the 



152 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Religions to writings of Confucius ; if he had lived in Tur- 
theism P mfty key, ms followers would have straightway ap- 
be applied. p]ie(J that philo sophy to the religion of the 
Koran ; but living, as he did, where Christianity is the 
historical religion, those who accepted his views began, at 
once, to use them in accounting for the New Testament 
records. Hence the rise of the Pantheistic Christology, 
more generally known under the designation of the Tubing- 
en School, which has filled so large a space in the biblical 
criticism of the last half century, and to which I propose 
to devote the present lecture. 

Let us recall here, so far as the nature of our 
Sen? of undertaking requires, the central doctrine of 
Hegelian- Hegel's philosophy. It is that of the progres- 
sive development of the Absolute Idea, through 
a triplicate and never-ending process. By the Absolute 
Idea I understand him to mean the one sole reality, besides 
which nothing either is or can be conceived to be. In its 
logical results, though not in its essence, it is the same 
thing as Spinoza's Substance. In like manner it agrees 
with the Subject-Object of Schelling, while it seems hardly 
to differ, in any respect, from Fichte's World-Ego." This 
' idea is not a substance or entity, at least in our 
lute fdea. conception of it, but a process. The absolute, 
considered in itself, is either something or noth- 
ing. As apprehended in consciousness it is a " becoming," 
an endless evolution which had no beginning. In the evo- 
lution, or " becoming," there is all the time affirmation, 
negation, and higher affirmation. This triplicate move- 
A triplicate ment, forever carrying the absolute idea out 
process. ^ Q more an( j more perfect manifestations, con- 



PANTHEISM. 153 

stitutes the whole material of our knowledge. The 
movement goes on, not only in the phenomena of the 
universe considered as one, but in each division and sub- 
division, down to the least province of discovered facts. 
It is the method of progress in all civilizations, in all his- 
tories, in all arts, in all religions. Taken in the broadest 
sense it constitutes philosophy, which is that manifestation 
of the absolute idea in which its self-consciousness culmi- 
nates. The doctrine may be clearer to us, perhaps, if we 
compare it, or rather contrast it, with Comte's 

Compared 

threefold law of progress. According to Comte with j 
the facts of observation are accounted for : first " i tl ? re ® 

states." 

by hypothesis, either theological or metaphysi- 
cal ; then there is a negation of the hypothesis, through a 
destructive criticism ; and then there is an advance from 
hypothesis to the positive laws of phenomena. It is only 
in this- threefoldness of movement, however, that the two 
schemes even suggest each other. With Comte the pro- 
cess is but intellectual ; with Hegel it is real and universal. 
Comte recognizes only a limited movement in time, while 
Hegel makes it absolutely eternaL In Comte the three 
steps of the movement succeed each other chronologically, 
till at last only the third remains, which is permanent ; in 
Hegel these steps are simultaneous, and every one valid, 
and will continue to be forever. The absolute idea, even 
when asserted most ruclimentally, is not an hypothesis, but 
all the reality there is for the time being. The negation and 
criticism of its forms do not destroy it, as Comte makes 
theology and metaphysics fall before positivism, but are 
ever resulting in its higher affirmation. 



154 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 

In civilization, for instance, this triplicate 
tothehn? movement is always repeating itself. Men find 
civilization, themselves living together in one of the primi- 
tive stages of society. This rudimentary life is 
the absolute idea affirming itself; the positive form of the 
"becoming," or evolution in consciousness. But in the 
mean time humanity is outgrowing this form of civilization, 
and recoiling upon it, contradicting and destroying it. 
The effect of this conflict is another positive manifestation 
of the absolute idea, in some better form of civilization. 
And the higher ground thus reached, instead of being a 
resting-place, is always a point of departure to something 
still higher. In this way primitive barbarism rose to hero- 
worship, hero-worship to monarchy, and monarchy to the 
government of society by laws and constitutions. This 
unfolding of the absolute idea is history, and the recog- 
nition of it, and interpreting of human progress by its 
action, constitute the philosophy of history. 

Within the province of art, also, the Hegelian 

Theabso- l . ■ ° 

lute idea scheme reveals its essential nature. At first 

in art. 

men made for themselves a few rude implements 
and ornaments. Jubal was the father of such as handle 
the harp and organ; Tubal-cain, an instructor of every 
artificer in brass and iron. This was an actualization of 
the absolute idea in art. But that idea, being an eternal 
process, does not stop at this point. It goes beyond, and 
reacts upon what is with destructive effect. And it 
brings back with it, into the place of the forms it destroys, 
other forms which more perfectly embody its own possi- 
bilities. In all departments of life, as in art and civiliza- 
tion, there is forever a conservative party in conflict with 



PANTHEISM. 155 

a destructive party, and the result of their 

Progress 

strugsjlin or against each other is constant prop;- andcon- 

& ° ° te t m L & servatism. 

ress ; the further unfolding, that is, of the abso- 
lute idea. Whatever be the thesis on any subject for the 
time being, antithesis is steadily lifting the general con- 
sciousness to some higher thesis. 

Such being the universal necessity, it follows that re- 
ligion, like everything else, is subject to its action. The 
absolute idea was here first actualized, let us 
assume, in the form of fetich- worship. But lute idea 

■• m <y» in religion. 

immediately it began to recoil upon this affirma- 
tion of itself. And the result of the conflict was its higher 
affirmation as polytheism. Polytheism is now the thesis, 
and upon this, too, the absolute idea straightway reacts by 
antithesis, thus lifting the religious consciousness of the 
world into the form of monotheism. In this way monothe- 
ism, as at first imperfectly held, became that which the 
absolute idea affirmed. But by the necessity of its devel- 
opment, the idea still reacted destructively on what it had 
affirmed, and thus rose to the positive conception of Chris- 
tianity. Christianity, as a temporary embodiment of the 
absolute idea, is now the thesis in religion. The 

• i i-i •-.-!• t i • Christianity 

antithesis, which assails this, and destroys its one of the 

temporary 

formal expression in the New Testament records, forms of 

1 ... tne absolute 

is {he Tubingen school of criticism ; which criti- idea. 
cisrn, however, so far from doing any harm to 
religion itself, as conceived under the absolute idea, only 
clears the way for some manifestation of it more noble 
than the Christianity of the Bible. Thus it is that pan- 
theism, under the handling of Hegel and his school, finds 
-within itself a place for the Christian religion. That 



156 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Christianity is, however, only a transitory embodiment of 
the absolute idea, which idea alone is permanent, in reli- 
gion as everywhere else. This winds its all-crushing folds 
about the historical Christ, destroying him as it gave 
him, for the sake of its own higher manifestation. The 
so-called historical Christ is a myth, and the absolute idea, 
which wrought in the religious imagination of men to 
create that myth, and which even now is seeking a nobler 
incarnation, is the only and the whole, the all-one reality. 

The followers of Hegel soon separated into a " right " 
and " left ; " and these two parties straightway went to 
war with each other, and are still at strife, evolving him 
through their disputes, about as interminably as his con- 
tradictories evolve the absolute. His influence, even upon 

Christian theists, may be easily accounted for. 
?iew» e of ^ e ^ e< ^ suddenly, at the age of sixty, while the 
Hegelian- p ra i se s of his philosophy were resounding far 

and near. No young thinker, much less any, 
German thinker, wished to set himself against so great a 
name. Those who held to orthodoxy, and to conservative 
views generally, yet professed Hegelianism, lest this glory 

should all pass over to the revolutionary party. 

The " -rio-ht." 

They sought to show . that Hegel's philosophy 
did not subvert historical Christianity, nor the positive 
institutions of the church and the state. Bat the absurdi- 
ty of their effort was too manifest to make* much head- 
way. Though revived from time to time, even to the 
present day, the attempt to prove that Hegelianism agrees 
with orthodox Christianity has been generally regarded as 
a failure. Julius Miiller, a thoroughly competent witness, 
says, " No place is to be found in this system for a finite 



PANTHEISM. 157 

life unfolding itself progressively, in pure and undisturbed 
harmony with God and with itself, and the attempt to 
force such an idea into it is vain. Hegel, therefore, in his 
logic, is fond of using 'infinitude' and 'holiness' as cor- 
relatives, and in his lecture^ upon the Philosophy of Reli- 
gion, he uses ' the finite 'as the correlative of ' evil,' with 
the additional limitation that ' evil is the extreme of fini- 
tude.' " 1 Those who take the " left," construing Hegel's 
system to the overthrow of positive institutions, may well 
charge their opponents with a lack of the scientific spirit ; 
with looking to practical results, that is, rather than to the 
real nature of what Hegel taught. Take the 

° ° The " left." 

self-contradictory thought-process, which is the 
absolute idea eternally evolving itself, and go on fearlessly 
with it, say they, never turning back to guard your preju- 
dices, and warning final causes, historical Christianity, and 
all other obstacles to save themselves as they best can. 
But this party, even if true to the logical tendencies of 
the system, were yet false to the spirit of their master. 
They, too, like their extreme opponents, sought to make 
use of the new philosophy in furthering their practical 
views of social and individual life. But was it possible 
that so great a man as Hegel should wish to be only a 
destroyer? that he should seek to cast oif all bands of 
order from men, and bring in a social chaos everywhere? 
This was the question now raised by some of 
his disciples, to which they could return only a tre?'" 6 ™" 
negative answer. And hence arose a third party, 
called the " centre," though left-centre would have been the 
more accurate term, perhaps. These claimed to stand 

i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book II., Chap. IV. 



158 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

midway between the other two parties, and laid special 
claim to that scientific spirit which they alike had for- 
saken. And here again we are reminded of the Hegelian 
dialectics, the same idea evolving itself anew through the 
conflict of its opposites in manifestation. 

One of the first and most earnest of this 

Strauss. 

"centre" party was David Friederich Strauss. 
He, while still a youth under twenty, had sat in the vast 
audience of learned men who listened with delight and 
wonder to the ripest utterances of Hegel. None were 
more receptive than he, none more enthusiastic in their 
advocacy of the new system. It was under this impulse 
that he went to Tubingen, where Hegel had been educated, 
to lecture at the university, and also to be connected with 

the theological faculty. As we might expect, 

At Tubingen. ° . J of) 

he looked at all subjects through the system of 
philosophy which he brought with him. He was a pen 
in Hegel's hand, a tongue to the Hegelian philosophy. 
But he wrote and spoke, for the most part, on subjects 
connected with the biblical teachings. We are at present 
concerned, therefore, to see what the method was by 
which he found a place for Christianity in this pantheistic 
temple. 

His Life of Jesus, which has given him so wide a noto- 
riety, was published within five years after the death of 

Hegel, and when Strauss himself was but 
of Jesus!" twenty-seven years old. It was a work of 

youthful enthusiasm, and not free from the faults 
wont to mar such efforts. Other critics, agreeing with 
him in the main, especially Ferdinand Christian Baur, 



PANTHEISM. 159 

have written more ably and accurately. It is not what 
Strauss did, so much as the state of religious thought at 
the time of his doing it, which has made him, throughout 
the world, the popular representative of the school to 
which he belongs. The style of biblical criticism which 
he boldly adopted had for a long time been cautiously 
growing up. And the destruction of the Evangelical 
record, in which his criticism issued, was no shock, but an 
omen of hope, to those who would resolve everything 
back into an eternal thought-process by which all things 
are evolved. 

Strauss took the ground that all positive religions, 
Christianity among them, are but transient forms in which 
the absolute idea, under its religious designa- 
tion, manifests itself. These forms are con- The idea in 

7 religion 

stantly changing, even while their names are Jjjj."^™" 
retained ; and they can never have any but a 
secondary value. Our so-called historical Christianity is 
only the flowing dress in which the imaginations of Chris- 
tians have clothed the religious idea. That idea itself, 
being the absolute in one of its phases, is the only impor- 
tant thing. And not only this, but since it is part of 
the eternal thought-process, as such it is the only real 
thing in Christianity. The temporary embodiment of the 
process, whether in the form of narrative, discourses, con- 
versations, dogmatic treatises, natural or so- 
called supernatural events, is of but little SJnofSs- 
account. It may be altogether fictitious, or a battrlviai! h 
nebulous mass of fiction clustered about some 
small nucleus of fact ; or it may be a string of fabulous 
inventions and parables, antedated afterwards by some 



160 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

unscrupulous editor, who would thus make it seem to fall 
within certain historical limits. No matter wfcat that 
embodiment for the time being is, provided it is a suitable 
form in which the imagination of man may express his 
religious ideal. So long as it admits of this, in the case 
of those who accept it, its office is fulfilled. The question 
of fact or fiction need not be raised ; for it serves its turn 
all the same, be it history, fable, poetry, legend, myth, or 
a mixture impossible to define. 

When Strauss was dismissed from the faculty of the- 
ology at Tubingen on account of his heresies, he took the 
attitude of surprised and injured innocency. He thought 
it very hard that he should be driven forth for affirming 

that Christianity was of so little account as 
Christianity, history, and as such might be either true or 

false, while he held with all his might to the 
idea which evolved it. The story of the Nazarene sym- 
bolizes to us the working of the moral ideal in man, at a 
certain stage of the general progress. That ideal, wearing 
such dress as representative writers saw fit to give it, 
passes before us. It is God manifest in the flesh, it dies, 
it rises, it ascends into heaven. The whole beautiful pic- 
ture, so far as it has any value or significancy, is but a 
movement in the human consciousness. The scene is not 

objective, but purely subjective; not the won- 
pl-oducedfh? der-working of one who brings help down to 
ord. aUcd reC us fr° m above, but the many-hued robes of an 

ideal Christ which humanity thinks into being. 
If we would know how the Evangelical record grew up, 
Strauss would say, let us consider how the Iliad, Paradise 
Lost, and Hamlet were produced. The only difference is 



PANTHEISM. 161 

that these are the works of individuals, thinking partly in 
secular channels, while that may be regarded as the work 
of a whole people, under the lead of the religious imagina- 
tion. Humanity is always in a state of progressive think- 
ing, on religious as on other subjects. This is the grand 
truth, and all the truth. Man's religious thinking is not 
to be put under restraint. It may array itself in such 
garments as it likes ; may appropriate history, or put its 
own inventions into the form of history ; may seize upon 
any marvellous tales floating about in tradition ; may 
make use of the actual, the possible, and the impossible, 
in giving "a local habitation and a name" to its "airy 
nothings" which are everything. 

From this theory Strauss passes, by a nat- criticism 
ural inference, to his Life of Jesus. All the thenon- th 
temporary forms of religion are legitimate game essentla • 
for the critic, — who loves to discern between the his- 
torical and the poetical in literature, and who seems to 
think it but fair that he, provided he holds firmly to the 
absolute idea in religion, should be allowed to amuse him- 
self with trying to destroy the Christian religion. It is 
not^at all surprising that such a target should have been 
chosen by the Hegelian, on which to prove his marksman- 
ship. The paths of religion and philosophy, where not 
co-incident, are near each other. Neither of them can be 
pursued very far by itself. This is shown in the case of 
Strauss. There was but a step between his lighted torch 
and the Christian records. And having been bred up in a 
philosophy which assigned a lower seat than its own to 
every form of religion, it did not occur to him that he was 
at all sacrilegious or irreverent, though somewhat re- 
11 



162 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

gardless of prevailing prejudices, in brushing aside the 
whole drapery of an historical Gospel. So much of the 
Evangelical record as had ceased to express the scientific 
thinking of the age on religious subjects, had become an 
obstacle to the further progress of religion. Its reign was 
broken. It was a discrowned and lifeless body. And the 
still more glorious manifestation of the absolute idea, re- 
quired that it should be hidden away as soon as possible. 
Evidence ^ ut wnat * s the evidence, some may ask, that 

wm ? r paa- ■*■ ^ ave state( i tne rea l spirit of the Tubingen 
theist. criticism ? Such evidence abounds. A little of 

it I will now proceed to give. Strauss quotes the remark 
of Schelling, that " the incarnation of God is an incarnation 
from eternity ; " and he says that Schelling " understood, 
under the incarnate Son of God, the finite itself in the form 
of the human consciousness." 1 This is his own doctrine. 
The God-man is the absolute idea coming to self-conscious- 
ness in man's religious thinking. This thought-process in 
humanity is the eternal Son, the Word, that by which all 
things are made, and in which God loves the world. " The 
recognition of God as a spirit implies, that God does not 
remain as a fixed and immutable infinite, encompassing 
the finite ; but enters into it, produces the finite, nature, 
and the human mind, merely as a limited manifestation of 
himself, from which he eternally returns into unity." 2 It is 
in the race of men, therefore, that the incarna- 

His view of . m , ^ .. 

the incarna- tion oi God takes place. 1 he Gospels are a 

tion. 

picture of what is forever going forward in our 
religious consciousness. Jesus is a symbolical, ideal char- 

i Life of Jesus, Evans' stranslation (N. Y., 1856), Vol. II„ § 150. 2 Ibid. 



PANTHEISM. 163 

acter, imaging to us the workings of the humam mind; all 
springs from its depths and divine impulses. 

10 l l The origin 

" That history is a beautiful poem of the human of the 

J L m Gospels. 

race, — a poem in which are embodied all the 
wants of our religious instinct. The history in the Gos- 
pels is in fact the history of human nature conceived ide- 
ally, and exhibits to us in the life of an individual, what 
man ought to be, and can become." What was fact and 
certain history to the four Evangelists, is to us " a sacred 
mythus and poetry." " The points of view only are dif- 
ferent : human nature, and the religious impulse in it, re- 
main ever the same." 1 " To know the ideal Christ," says 
Strauss, quoting Spinoza, " namely, the eternal wisdom of 
God, which is manifested in all things, in the human mind 
particularly, and especially in Jesus Christ, alone is neces- 
sary." 2 " The key to the whole of Christology Accepts 
is this," he again says : " That an idea, instead vfewof ' s 
of an individual, is set forth as the subject of the Chrlst - 
attributes which are attributed to Christ in the Church doc- 
trine. Humanity is the union of both natures. Humanity 
is the miracle-worker. Humanity, not the individual, but 
the race, is the sinless one. Humanity is that which dies, 
and rises again, and ascends towards heaven. This alone 
is the absolute subject-matter of Christology : the circum- 
stance that it appears in the person and history of Jesus 
of Nazareth, is but the poetical dress of the doctrine." 3 
Strauss even makes the Evangelists them- „„. , ,. 

Thinks the 

selves profess pantheism, where they say of conscious- 

1 Life of Jesus, Vol IT., § 149. 2 ibid. 

3 Dr. W. H. Mill's " Observations on the Attempted Application of Panthe- 
istic Principles to the Theory and Historic Criticism of the Gospels" (Cam- 
bridge, England, 18C1). 



164 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ness of Christ " that he recognized God as his Father, 

.would have God's Cause as his OWn, Was COnSCioUS Of know- 
responded T , .. . 
to hi 8 criti- ing the Jb ather, and resigned his own will to 

the divine, where he speaks expressly of his 
oneness with the Father, and sets himself forth as the 
visible manifestation of the same. Such utterances were 
without pretension, arising from no transient elevation 
of mind, but from the conviction of his whole life. 
All his acts and discourses were penetrated with this 
consciousness as with a soul." * The Gospels portray to us 
such a personage; and his existence is not historically 
but ideally true, which alone is scientifically possible. 
He is the absolute idea, shining forth in the human 
consciousness for a season, and then sinking back into 
the infinite depths, to be succeeded by another and more 
glorious theophany, in the progressive thought of the race. 
We may compare the doctrine of Strauss, or rather of 
Hegel, to the phenomena of evaporation in nature. The 
waters above the firmament are one with the waters under 
the firmament. The mists, which pile themselves in fleecy 
masses of silver and gold along the calm heights of the 
sky, are still the ocean which sent them up, and they are 
constantly falling back into it, as it is all the time rising 
into their beautiful forms. In the Christology of Strauss, 

the absolute idea is the ocean, — a sea unfathomed 

The Gospel . _ ^ p . ■ 

record a and without shore, lhis, coming forth into the 

Piece of . . • . 

cloud human consciousness, paints that piece 01 gor- 

painting-. 

geous cloud-scenery, the story of the Nazarene. 
But the abysmal depths are forever reclaiming the iridescent 
vapor which they send up. The sweet Evangel cannot retain 
that which fills it with its rainbow hues. Even while we 

i Dr. Mill, p. 5G. 



PANTHEISM. 165 

look it is not the same, but changing every moment. The 
one changeless and eternal thing in all this, is the absolute 
idea ; which these moving splendors serve but to reveal, 
and besides which there is no value or reality in the whole 
display. 



Now this pantheism of Strauss, from which he Advantage 
undertook the criticism of the Gospels, gave theistlcpo- 
him a certain vantage-ground. It enabled him 
to deal a death-blow to the naturalistic school of critics, of 
which Paulus was the leader. This school was The Pau , 
already in its decadence when he wrote. It lst8 * 
had tried to apply to the Christian Scriptures such rules 
of interpretation as Evemerus, an ancient Greek 

Evemerus. 

critic, applied to the classical mythology. Eve- 
rnefus held that the Greek gods and heroes were ex- 
traordinary men, who to increase their power had. sur- 
rounded themselves with a nimbus of divinity, or whom 
tradition had invested with superhuman attributes. 1 The 
Wolfenbuttel Fragmentist was among the first of His method 

revived, by 

modern interpreters to apply this theory to the Lessing,edi- 

,.,,., .tor of the 

biblical record. He would not even admit the Woifenbut- 

tel Frag- 

honesty of the great leaders and teachers whom ments. 
the Bible names. They were designing men, who feigned 
inspiration and intercourse with the God of heaven, to 
gain influence over the masses of the people. To this 
extent Paulus did not go. He still claimed that 
men of such benevolence as Abraham, Moses, P ^ u , sed 

' by Paulus. 

David, Paul, and who really accomplished so 

1 For some account of Evemerus see Grote (Harper's edition), Vol. I,, pp. 
411, 412. 



166 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

much good, could not be wilful deceivers. But they might 
be self-deceived. They might mistake their natural en- 
thusiasm for a supernatural afflatus. Their conviction of 
the vast importance of what they were doing, might give 
rise to a belief of divine authority to do it. No miracle is 
to be admitted anywhere ; yet the honesty of the writers 
and actors, and the historical character of the record, are 
to be maintained. 

Wild as the attempt may seem, yet it is a fact 
ttie 8 theo?y. tnat Paulus sought to explain the Bible on this 
theory. Our first parents ate some poisonous 
fruit, which planted in them the seeds of hereditary dis- 
ease : this, on naturalistic principles, may be regarded as 
the historic fact of the Fall and its consequences. Moses 
built a large fire on Mount Sinai, and just then a thunder- 
storm arose. When he came down to the people, his face 
shone as the natural effect of so much excitement. So, 
too, in the New Testament. Early one morning Christ is 
with three of his disciples in a mountain. He is above 
them, towards the east, on the highest peak ; when the 
sun, suddenly rising behind, him, makes his whole person 
shine, so that the disciples are blinded by looking at him. 
Peter did not find the tribute-money in the mouth of the 
fish ; this is only a nice way of telling what did occur, 
namely, that he caught the fish and sold it for the money. 
Christ and his disciples took wine with them to the wed- 
ding at Cana ; and it was their putting this into the six 
water-jars, through a quiet understanding with the servants, 
which constitutes the historical matter in the narrative. 
Thus would a Paulist go along through the record, enucle- 
ating so much of it as is not supernatural, and holding that 



PANTHEISM. 167 

this, or some equivalent, is literal history; while the rest 
is but embellishment, — the result of a rich Oriental fancy, 
or of that tendency to exaggerate which is in all great story- 
tellers. Paulus has some followers even at the present day, 
as the work of Schenkel on the Character of Jesus may 
serve to attest. No one, excepting always a German with 
a theory to maintain, can fail to see that the nat- 
uralism of Paulus was an ignoble failure. His ^Skirf 1 * 18 
attempt made it plain, if it was not clear before, 
that we must admit the supernatural in Revelation, or we 
cannot regard it as in any proper sense historical. 
Eichhorn, who was contemporary with Paulus, 

1 J . Eichhorn. 

applied the method of Evemerus to biblical in- 
terpretation. The same is true also ofDeWet- 

1 De Wette. 

te to some extent. But these scholars either 
lacked the intrepidity of Paulus, or they had a keener sense 
than he of the puerile tendencies of his criticism. They 
did not wish to divest the Scriptures of all dignity. 
Therefore, while pursuing a course which in many things 
sustained the orthodox faith, in some things they leaned 
towards the view of Paulus, and in other things they were 
inclined to grant the Tubingen theory of a poetizing 
fancy. ,The inspired writers are communicating 

, ,i i i , • ,i • Strauss soes 

truth everywhere, but m some cases their en- \ n them the 
thusiasm makes the dress in which they clothe the myth- 
it. It is this concession of an unhistorical ele- 
ment, by De Wette, but more especially by Eichhorn, 
which Strauss does not fail to seize upon as a partial and 
cautious approach towards his own theory of the mythus. 
Indeed, he goes back of them, even to Origen and Philo, 
for the germs of his theory. I am not careful here to 



168 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

defend either of those early interpreters. Philo was an 
acknowledged Neo-Platonist ; and Origen felt the influ- 
ence of the Alexandrine pantheism. Therefore 
Thinks Ori- they may have both applied a pantheistic exe- 

g-en and J J l l i 

Philo held gesis to the sacred records. But it is certain that 

his theory. ° 

Origen, to say the least, did not deny the his- 
torical validity of the Scriptures. His allegorical sense 
was not a creative energy, but a meaning which he found 
in the narrative. No doubt there is some ground for what 
Strauss says of himself, that he only matured a theory of 
interpretation which had been growing up for along time. 
The enthusiastic reception his work met with, in various 
quarters, proves that the minds of many biblical critics 
had come to be in sympathy with him. The appetite 
which his mythical theory gorged, had been, to say the 
least, awakened. Even the orthodox party read fcim, not 
sorry to see their old foes, the naturalistic rationalists, fall- 
Relation to iog under his sturdy assaults. Yet they them- 
schools of selves were in no better plight. Strauss saved 
criticism. them from the Paulists, only as the hawks 
saved the doves from the kites. They were, like Samson, 
crushed themselves by what they pulled down upon their 
enemies. Paulus admitted that the Bible is historical, 
but not supernatural; Strauss denied that it is either. 
To his view the Bible, and especially its Christology, is 
the product of the absolute idea, working in the reli- 
gious imagination of the Hebrew race for the most part. 
This idea, coming to self-consciousness in the religious 

thinking of men, is the whole reality in sacred 

Secret of ~ TT , , , . . . , 

hispopu- Scripture, as Hegel had taught him to say ; and 
in just this fact, that Strauss was a Hegelian 



PANTHEISM. 169 

speaking to a generation of Hegelians, is the secret of the 
prodigious popularity of his work. 

The orthodox principle of interpretation is, Three prin- 

... ciples of 

that the biblical record is historical, and much interpreta- 
tion, 
of it supernatural, — as it ought to be, since 

it describes a coming down of the omnipotent God 
into nature to save sinful men. The naturalistic ration- 
alist admits its historical validity, but tries to get rid 
of the supernatural. The mythologist denies that it is 
either history or miracle, making it a product of the re- 
ligious imagination. The mythical theory differs from the 
legendary, — the latter granting some weight to historical 
facts, while the former affirms that it is indifferent whether 
the narrative be true or false. These two theories differ 
rather in degree than in kind, however, while 

The posi- 

the more extreme, namely, the mythical, is that tionof 

Strauss. . 

held by Strauss. So much of the record as is 
supernatural, is of course unhistoric, since it all is but the 
fruit of human thinking. And so much of it as might 
have happened, is given not because it happened, but be- 
cause it is a convenient form in which the thought, working 
itself out, may be embodied. JEsop makes the dumb ani- 
mals, the fishes, and the reptiles talk together 

\ 1 & The myth. 

with man, in his efforts to convey truth : the 
writers of the Bible have used a similar liberty. They 
tell of what did not take place, and of what could not take 
place, more or less mingled, perhaps, with actual occur- 
rences, with the sole purpose of giving forth that religious 
idea which is struggling for expression within them. 

In order to make room for the growth of the Evangelical 



170 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

mythus, such as his pantheistic philosophy requires, Strauss 

puts the origin of the Gospels forward into the 

Strauss second century of our era. Jerusalem had been 

makes room . . 

for his destroyed at least tnty years, and the Christians 

were scattered abroad throughout the Roman 
empire. None of the immediate friends of Jesus of 
Nazareth, not even any who had conversed with those 
friends, were now living. There was, among those thus 
scattered abroad, a tradition that Jesus had been a Rabbi 
of a singularly pure and noble character, who had suffered 
a most cruel death some time before their dispersion. 
This story, handed on from the elder to the younger, and 
carried from place to place in an unwritten form, naturally 
grew on the lips of the exiles, and shaped itself to their 
ideas and feelings. It became a type of their calamity, 
and of their hope; that is, a mythus, — like the legend of 
William Tell, mistaken by some for actual history, which 
is but a symbol of the Swiss struggle for liberty. The 
Jewish nation has been violently overthrown ; 
the product and the story ran that the good Rabbi from 

of the idea. 

Nazareth was cruelly killed. But the Jewish 
nation is to be restored ; therefore Jesus, its mythical type, 
is imagined to have risen from the dead, and ascended into 
heaven. The Messianic spirit, having thus seized upon 
the tradition, connects it with Old Testament prophecies. 
Therefore a birth and childhood of Jesus are imagined, 
and a public ministry and sufferings, answering to the early 
predictions of a Messiah. " Such and such things must 
have happened to the Messiah ; Jesus was the Messiah ; 
therefore such and such things happened to him." l The 

i Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 67. 



PANTHEISM. 171 

mythus is " the product of the idea." Jesus is greater 
than any that went before him, therefore greater marvels 
must have attended him. Because the face of Moses 
shone, he must be transfigured. There were twelve Jewish 
tribes, hence he must have twelve disciples. Whatever 
the Messiah was expected to do, he is fancied as doing ; 
and the name Son of God, given to him, grows out of the 
feeling that the Hebrew nation, which he ideally typified, 
is the chosen favorite of heaven. 

Thus did the Gospel narratives grow up. They belong 
to the post-apostolic age. They are not history, but 
national religious poems ; not the work of particular indi- 
viduals, but of a whole people, which certain persons after 
a while took the liberty of reducing to writing. If we 
ask Strauss why these writers did not put their own names 
to their works ; why they have practised a fraud upon us 
in representing those works as written by the companions 
of Christ and the apostles, his reply is, "The most repu- 
table authors, amongst the Jews and ea^y Christians, pub- 
lished their works with the substitution of venerated names, 
without an idea that they were guilty of any falsehood or 
deceit in so doing." 1 Such is 'one of the exigencies into 
which the theory of Strauss brings him. In order to give 
the Evangelical mythus time to grow up, the Gospel narra- 
tives are declared to be post-apostolic. Thus 
he is obliged to admit that the writers practised lows if the 
literary forgery. Yet he sees no immorality in post-apos- 
their conduct, but thinks they were under the 
influence of the most exalted motives ! The absolute idea 
of religion, revealing itself in the national mind, is what 

i Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 68. 



172 HALF TRUTHS AKD THE TEUTH. 

we are to see and admire, — revering it not the less, but 
the more, for working itself out through so much story- 
telling and innocent trickery ! This may meet the highest 
demands of a Straussian conscience, perhaps ; but there 
are still a few persons in the world of so singular a turn 
of mind as to refuse the nostrum, preferring a little less 
absolute, and a little more honesty. We think it not so 
likely that the authors of the four Gospels should occupy 
themselves with inventing lies, as that this Whittington- 
ancl-his-cat theory of the life of Christ should be false. 
We claim strong internal evidence for our conclusion ; 
since it is the charm of the Gospels that they have none 
of the air of poetic fiction, but everywhere give 
internal us wn at profess to be actual events, in the sim- 

evirience. l 

Strauss plest and plainest style. There is nowhere any 
impression or hint of a myth. If a fraud, it is 
the wickedest of all frauds, for every word of it has the his- 
toric stamp. That which not only so stirs us, but is so real 
to us in all its alleged facts, cannot be mere literary inven- 
tion. Its roots must go clown into the world of objective 
truth, which man beholds but does not create, and which 
will be the same when his place knows him no more. 

But we do not rely on this internal evidence 
External alone — evidence which the impotent charge of 

evidence l o 

iute7nai vith f° r g er y d° es not brush aside. There is strong- 
external evidence, going to confirm our con- 
clusion, that the Gospels were written by the men whose 
names they bear. Before the time to which Strauss 
assigns the origin of the Evangelical writings, they were 
quoted as works well known . among the Christians. 
Already, even in regard to the Fourth Gospel, the last 



PANTHEISM. 173 

written, Justin Martyr, Papias, and others had testified to 
its existence, by quoting from it and repeatedly referring 
to it. In order to. escape this historic testi- 

How Strauss 

■niony, Strauss invents the fiction of a Gospel would evade 

afterwards lost, to which the apostolic fathers 

and the early critics refer, and on which those we now 

have were founded. But however grand or fruitful the 

Hegelian philosophy may be, we must be excused for 

thinking it a little grandiose in fruitfulness, when it not 

only sets aside well-attested history, but invents history 

of which there is no record, for the sake of an unproved 

assumption. Not only the testimony of the 

early fathers, and of infidels even, as well as the The /"£":. 

' ' meat lor the 

intrinsic character of the Gospels, but the geog- JJJJfnSthe 
raphy of Palestine itself, is to-day a refutation SiswIraWe. 
of the theory of Strauss. The origin of the 
Gospels was not mythical, but historical. They are not 
merely ideally but objectively true. No hypothesis solves 
the problem of their origin, as presented in the light of 
contemporary events, but that which affirms them to have 
been written by the men whose names they bear, eye- 
witnesses and ear-witnesses of the supernatural facts 
which they record. 

The Tiibin^en school of criticism would have 

° Baur. 

fallen into disrepute sooner than it did, but for 
the efforts of Ferdinand C. Baur, perhaps its most skilful 
representative. He does not, in the same unqualified 
sense as Strauss, seem committed to the philosophy of 
Hegel. He wrote an adverse criticism on the Life of 
Jesus, when that work first came out. But however the 



174 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

two men may differ as between themselves, in their atti- 
tude towards historical Christianity they agree. Strauss 
regards the Messianic idea in the mind of the Hebrew 
race as the germ of the Gospels. The view of Baur, 
though mythical like this, is that the writings 
straus S s! r ° m of tne N" ew Testament must be traced to a less 
poetical source, namely, the conflict which had 
arisen between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. His 
statement of this theory, as well as his defence of it, is 
very ingenious. There were two parties in the 
Eks^ave early church, — a Petrine and a Pauline party. 
Gospels! 16 The latter were desirous that the Jewish faith 
should merge itself into a world-religion, the 
former wished it to be kept strictly Avithin the old national 
limits. In the dispersed condition of the Jews, living in 
Roman and Greek communities, everything naturally 
favored the Gentile party. It grew steadily, especially by 
the incoming of Gentile converts, while its rival faction as 
steadily lost ground. As time passed on, and the once 
clear authority of the Mosaic laws had grown dim, even 
in the minds of the Petrine or conservative party, certain 
of the progressive or Pauline party stepped forward, and 
supplemented the Old Testament records by inventing 
the writings which compose the New Testament. They 
showed that the prophecies of the Old Testament pointed 
forward to something, and that something they supplied 
in the Gospels and Epistles. These writings 
eoufljct°a f ii a were so shaped as to suit the ancient tradition, 
tiiem5 h as to represent a long and varying struggle be- 
tween Jewish and Gentile Christianity, and as 
in the end to give the latter the ascendency over the 



PANTHEISM. 175 

former. Christ is portrayed as less and less Jewish, and 
more and more favorable to the Gentiles, as the 
feigned narrative goes forward. This is shown SakeSe 
in his denunciations of the Pharisees, while he "avofthe 
befriends outcasts ; also in his formal discourses, P a"ty Ue 
and especially in his parables. The lost sheep, 
the pieces of silver, the prodigal son, awakening so much 
concern in each instance, are the Gentile world. The un- 
just steward, whom his lord puts out of the stewardship, 
is Israel. The fact of descent from Abraham is to be dis- 
regarded ; Christ proclaims a religion which is equally 
open to all men. Those on the right hand of the Judge 
in the last day are good Gentiles ; true subjects of the new 
kingdom, though kept in ignorance of their relation to 
Christ by the Petrine teachings. Those on the left hand 
are bad Jews, rejected for lack of such obedience as the 
others have shown. Peter is more a name than a person, 
representing the narrow view. He has precedence in the 
apostolic college, as the Jews had in the matter of revela- 
tion. But he does many weak things, such as denying 
his Master, waiting for a vision before he will 
visit Cornelius, and refusing to eat with the Tppears. S 
Gentiles after his doing so had offended some 
at Jerusalem. Gradually he is made to acquire broader 
views, yet he cannot quite put away his exclusive feelings ; 
and finally, after some collisions with the party of prog- 
ress, in which he is uniformly put to the worse, he sinks 
out of the so-called history altogether. Meanwhile the 
liberal tendency, for the sake of which the New Testa- 
ment writings were drawn up, is described as making 
rapid headway, and as absorbing the whole energy and 



176 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

piety of the church. Not only does it show to advantage 

throughout the Evangelical mythus, but especially in the 

Acts of the Apostles. Paul, the representative 

The Paul- l . . r 

ine party rnan of this movement, is the great missionary, 

triumphs. _ # . . 

entirely eclipsing Peter, withstanding him to 
the face because he was to be blamed, and forcing him at 
last to yield his pretensions. Various treatises are added, 
which, to increase their influence, are called the Epistles 
of Paul, or of those who in the main accepted his views. 
Even Peter is made to indorse the Pauline party, in his 
Epistles, so called. Baur concedes that some of the trea- 
tises ascribed to Paul were written by him ; but the Gen- 
tile spirit predominates in these no more than in those 
whose authorship is uncertain. The object of them all is, 
to impress it upon the minds of the early Christians, that 
either the liberal party in the church must triumph, or the 
whole Evangelical idea, as well as the Messianic idea back 
of it, must be given up. Baur thinks that many a Juda- 
izing Christian, in the second century and near the begin- 
ning of the third, falling in with the New Testament 

writings and reading them thoughtfully, must 
The reason- have been persuaded to give up his Judaism, 

in^otBaur l . . 

notadmis- an d accept the newer doctrine of a world-reli- 

sible. L 

gion. To beget such a persuasion was the pur- 
pose of the authentic treatises, and of the feigned letters 
and narratives. This purpose emboldened the writers, 
whoever they were, to do what is sometimes done by the 
correspondents of newspapers. They imagined the sto- 
ries they wrote out ; and these, for lack of a rigid criti- 
cism, such as Baur and his school now apply to them, 
gained general currency among the credulous friends of 



PANTHEISM. 177 

the broad-church party. Histories were invented, for 
which those who knew Jesus personally are made to 
vouch, and essays were composed, at the head of which 
stood apostolic names ; and so childish was the age, and 
ready to be duped, that this deception passed without 
successful challenge. It was not till nearly two thousand 
years after, that, the Daniel of biblical criticism, in the 
form of the Tubingen school, came to judgment. 

It will be seen, therefore, that the position of Baur, with 
reference to the historical validity of the New Testament, 
is substantially that of Strauss. Hence the facts which 
refute one are a sufficient answer to the other. Having 
already indicated what those facts are, I need 
not repeat them here. Those who wish to ex- ^Station 
amine the whole question of the historical valid- £ere needed 
ity of the New Testament, need hardly to be 
referred to the many volumes of recent critics, in which 
this matter is ably discussed. One of the best of these, 
for general use, is Professor Fisher's work on the Super- 
natural Origin of Christianity. This work makes it clear, 
by a full and scientific treatment of the subject, that the 
ground of Baur is untenable. 

To the special view of Baur respecting parties in the 
apostolic church, there is no objection. Such parties un- 
doubtedly did exist. They are plainly described 
to us in the New Testament history. It is pS;^ 1 " 6 
Baur's fault, that instead of finding them in the church! 7 
history, he makes them create the so-called his- 
tory. He finds the evangelical record in his idea, rather 
than the grounds of his idea in the record. In doing this, 
he shows the peculiar vice of German thinkers. When 
12 



178 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

they have found a theory, they are inclined to make that 
theory the source of whatever else they find. With Baur 
the idea of two parties originates the New Testament 
writings, as the Messianic idea does with Strauss. And 
in this producing power of the idea they both follow 
Hegel, who finds in his absolute idea the creative sub- 
stance of all things. We find, in the history of the 
United States soon after the adoption of the Constitution, 
two political parties, — the federal, led by John Adams, 
and the republican, led by Thomas Jefferson. But what 
would be thought of the critic who, discovering this con- 
flict, should declare that it, for the partisan purposes of 
one side or the other, has created all our so-called national 
history ; that the record is simply an imaginary 

treatment dress, in which some partial champion has em- 
unfair. ' L * 

bodied his view of the conflict ; that the strug- 
gle did not begin till some time after the date assigned ; 
that it is very doubtful whether Adams and Jefferson are 
not, after all, only the myths which some politician has 
imagined ; while it is certain that they never penned many 
of the writings which now claim their authorship ? Yet 
this is not an unfair illustration of the spirit of the Tu- 
bingen criticism. Not satisfied with running its theory 
into the ground, it runs the ground into its theory. 

The ancients had their muse of history, whose aid they 
reverently invoked, while attempting to set past events in 
order. Did they not, in this, recognize a universal human 
infirmity? Even our secular historians carry back their 
private views, to the serious discoloring of that which 
they would describe. It was left for Strauss and Baur to 
enthrone this infirmity, and make it the originator of the 



PANTHEISM. 179 

sacred annals. But there is a Muse of evangelical history. 
Holy men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
This divine inspiration saved them from the error to 
which all historians are liable. It kept them back from 
the mythical abyss into which Bam* and Strauss fell head- 
long. It enabled them to record God's thoughts towards 
us, and the great facts of redemption, with no damaging 
admixture of subjective theory; so that we do 

Strauss and 

well to take heed to their words, as to a light Baur fur- 

nish an ar- 

that shineth in a dark place. There are many gumentfor 

1 J inspiration. 

arguments for inspiration, but I know of none 
more powerful than the rise of the Tubingen school of 
criticism. If we are to have a revelation from the Father 
of our spirits, and not sink into naturalism or blank ideal- 
ism, there is no mere man whom we can dare to trust. 
That revelation, our sorest need, must come through per- 
sons whom God has inspired to speak his words unto us, 
and whom he so saves from their own imperfections, that 
they shall neither add anything to the message nor take 
anything away. 

A word only is needed, in this place, respecting 
the legendary theory of Renan. His Life of 
Jesus, and connected works, have been extensively read. 
And no wonder; for they clothe in a fascinating garb 
theories easily made plausible to minds but partially in- 
formed. Yet the careful reader soon finds that Renan's 
doctrine is not original ; it is a French imitation. His 
theory hardly seems to me to require any sepa- 

. Requires no 

rate treatment. Though he gives more space separate 

. treatment. 

to the historical element than either Baur or 



180 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Strauss, — as lie could not well help doing, being familiar 
with the geography of Palestine, and writing in the midst 
of it, — yet the pantheistic flavor of his thought often 
rises to the surface. It is true that he rejects the mythical 
theory, and adopts the legendary; but he still says that the 
criticism of the gospel-text by Strauss " leaves little to be 
desired." He also speaks of Christianity itself as an 
"evolution by which the noblest portions of humanity 
passed from the ancient religions." He says, with evident 
reference to the pantheistic doctrine of the absolute, "No 
passing vision exhausts divinity ; God was revealed before 
Jesus, God will be revealed after him. Widely unequal, 
and so much the more divine as they are the greater and 
the more spontaneous, the manifestations of the God con- 
cealed in the depths of the human conscience are all of 
the same order." The Christian religion, that is, though 

more or less historic in some of its forms, is only 
o?his P criti- an evolution within humanity, — part and parcel 
theistic. n °f tnat thought-process which is all the time 

going forward in man. That such is the philo- 
sophical germ of Renan's criticism, so far as it has any, 
and that he should be met on the same ground as other 
pantheists, is further indicated where he says, " If we ex- 
cept the French Revolution, no historic medium was so 
fitting as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those 

hidden powers which humanity holds as if in 

An irr6V6i*- 

entcom- reserve, and which she never reveals except in 
her days of fever and of danger." It is doubtful 
if any person, of less powerful imagination than Renan, 
would have seen much likeness between the stormy times 
of Robespierre and the peaceful Galilean society in which 



PANTHEISM. 181 

the Son of Mary grew up; and with the exceedingly 
liberal compliment given to Jesus, by insinuating that he 
was only second to the leaders of revolutionary France, 
we dismiss this popular critic to those who ignorantly 
admire him, not knowing what they worship. 

I only allude here, in conclusion, to the still Free re- 
more recent movement which calls itself Free igwl 
Religion. The peculiarity of this is, that it finds more or 
less of religious truth in all religions, and the whole essence 
of religion in the human consciousness. Brah- 
manisTii, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, [^peculiar, 
all the forms of religion now existing, in short, 
should stand together in brotherly fellowship. For they 
have all been developed by the same idea in man ; none 
of them % are of supernatural origin, or have any supreme 
authority ; and that in us which gave birth to these, is 
steadily crowding them aside with something better. It 
will be seen at a glance what is the parentage of this 
theory. While vainly striving to cling to the ghost of a 
departed theism, it is but the last and puny child of a 
philosophy already overthrown. It is the dying 

3Iay be 

echo of the voice which Heo-el lifted up so Ions; traced to 

Hegel. 

ago. It is the faint resonance, on this distant 
shore, of a wave whose original force is spent. Let pan- 
theism, like the divine revelation, have its "minor 
prophets " if it must. Yet it touches our American pride 
somewhat, when we see those prophets trying to convert 
our popular literature into a kind of Israelitish bazaar for 
the display of the philosophical old-clothes of the Germans. 
For Christianity itself, however, we have no fear. Chr j Stianity 
The warlike manifesto which scepticism issued triumph"**- 



182 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

half a century ago, has resulted in its own signal 
defeat. The stone cut out of the mountain has smitten 
the pantheistic image. Its fragments, ground to powder 
by the chariot-wheels of truth, are but the dust of the 
highway cast up for the Lord's ransomed, along which they 
are returning to Zion, — coming with songs, and with the 
joy of victory on their heads. 



. LECTURE V. 

The Culture which Pantheism legitimates. 

Those revolutionary tendencies of modern thought, of 
which we hear so much, are nowhere more manifest than 
in the ethical and social discussions of the day. 

A feature of 

Theories of duty, whether public or private, modern 

J ' 1 L ' thought. 

have forsaken their ancient base. In many 
instances they have even been faced about, so that what 
was once the front is now the rear, and the starting-point 
has become the point of attack. Formerly external 
authority was the. rule, but now spontaneity is the law 
which tends to prevail. The doctrine that morals are 
intuitive, and cannot be taught, has been broached. Hu- 
manity, in its spontaneous growth, is the true basis of the 
state ; and written compacts are hinderances in its way, 
which should be destroyed. Marriage should not rest on 
unchanging statutes, but on the free action of nature in 
man. The family and society, instead of depending on 
legislation, should be the unhindered outgrowth 
of forces which are a law to themselves. The tanSty. 
conduct of the individual, of the family, of so- 
ciety, of the state, all of which I here include under the 
general notion of Culture, should not be regulated from 
without, but from within. They should be spontaneous, 

(183; 



184 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

and not suffer themselves to be guided by external author- 
ity. That authority is fictitious. They make it by their 
own unfolding energy, and it but marks a point in their 
limitless progress, beyond which they have already passed 
when it rises into notice. 

I do not say that there was none of this revolutionary 
spirit in ancient times. There was much of it. But it 

wrought, for the most part, in a blind and aimless 
The ele- 
ments of way, so that the theory of human culture, which 

authority in . , 

modem appears most conspicuous to us as we look iar 
back, is the one which rests on external stan- 
dards. Nor do I mean to imply that this law of culture 
has at length been abandoned. It was never more loyally 
obeyed, or thoroughly and clearly expounded, than at the 
present moment. In this case, as in* all others, truth has 
been cleared up and strengthened by conflict with error. 
The doctrine of spontaneity in morals no doubt did good 
by correcting certain exaggerations, and calling attention 
to certain elements which had been neglected by the friends 
of truth. That doctrine has been thoroughly canvassed, 
however, and ably refuted, under the various 
untenable!' 3 '' ^ rms ft has taken since the revival of Spinozism. 
Whether known as Agrarianism, Communism, 
Chartism, or simply as "the Spirit of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury," when it has clamored for the abolition of the 
laws of property, for free marriage and free religion, its 
hostility to our noblest convictions has been clearly pointed 
out. It assumes an inborn purity in all men, and an ab- 
sence of evil tendencies, which their own honest con- 
sciousness sadly denies them. It shuts them aw T ay from 
those heavenly ideals which they did not originate, and 



PANTHEISM. 185 

from that holy God, whose authority checks the evil and 
helps the good in their natures. Its liberty is anarchy; 
its spontaneity means civil convulsions, social chaos, the 
axe, the knife, the torch, every man's hand against every 
man. These disorders are defended on the ground that 
the whole fabric of society has been wrongly organized, 
on a basis of external rules ; and it is claimed that all 
would have gone forward smoothly, if nothing had ever 
been put in the way of the spontaneous tendencies of 
men. 

We can see the fallacy of the reasoning easily enough, 
knowing as we do what many of the tendencies of human 
nature are; yet we are sometimes amazed, and 
half persuaded into belief of the theory, amid JJJ§J2££ 
the dazzling and bewildering sophistries which 
its advocates throw around us. We need, therefore, to 
know the source of their power. They must be forced 
back to a point which even they themselves, perhaps, have 
not yet found out. The ethical doctrines, which they 
would apply to man and society, have the same parentage 
as the theories of Strauss, Baur, and Renan. Pantheism 
is the universal solvent. We saw how all the facts of 
the Scriptures disappeared in it; we are now to see how 
the established regulations «£>f society, as soon as they 
touch it, melt out of sight. That social lawlessness seething 
in certain quarters, which gets itself more or less fiercely 
spoken now and then, may find in Hegel its legitimate 
source. His philosophy is its real major premise. The 
spontaneous culture, which it would substitute for that of 
positive precept, begins there; and this its philosophical 
origin we must clearly see, if we would dissolve its 



186 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

charm and expose its intrinsic ugliness. It puts on many- 
captivating disguises. The most pure-hearted feel the 
fascination of some of its partial statements. Only in its 
source, and its relation to moral evil, do its repulsive 
features* come out. 

There are many recent writers, whose names might 
represent more or less this doctrine of spontaneous cul- 
ture. Of these I select, as best suited to my purpose, the 
name of Goethe. The nature and influence of the new 
movement, and its relation to Spinozism, can be 

Goethe. . . . 

traced in him as perhaps in no other popular 
writer. It is evident, as I shall hope to show, that he 
ranges himself with the pantheistic school of thinkers ; 
and it will not be denied that in variety of topics, origi- 
nality, and beauty of style, he stands pre-eminent. There 
is a charm in nearly all that he has written, felt even by 
the best minds at times, the secret of which needs to be 

Uncovered. It is for these reasons that I now 

Why chosen. . 

call attention to him. 1 do not attempt a com- 
prehensive treatment, either of the man or his Writings. 
Those who look for this will no doubt be disappointed, 
and disposed to accuse me of injustice. I am concerned 
with a single phase of his character and influence. This 
is all that my purpose contemplates. I am not about to 
give an estimate of Goethe, but to show how a pantheistic 
philosophy affected him as a man and a writer. Unfortu- 
nately for me, it will be my duty to dwell on that aspect 
of Goethe's character which is least honorable to him. I 

crave only such indulgence as is fair, while 
in one as- doing this ungracious work, knowing as I do 

pect. 7 

the great merits of Goethe, which it would be 



PANTHEISM. 187 

out of place for me here to consider. It is as a disciple 
of Spinoza, carrying the principles of pantheism out logi- 
cally into his theory of literature and life, — in these rela- 
tions and no other, — that we have now any special con- 
cern with him. He was one of the earliest and foremost 
of those who hold that the laws of duty are not objective, 
but subjective; who reject outward authority, and fall 
back on spontaneous impulse as the true guide of human 
conduct. 

Goethe was enough younger than Kant and Lessing to 
have been moulded somewhat by their writings. From 
Jacobi and Herder, also, he may have received 
hints which gave a pantheistic turn to his think- Jf^er" of 
ing. But he was the senior of Schelling, and age.° wn 
had become a famous author before Fichte and 
Hegel were known to the public. From this we infer 
that he did not take his speculative views from the Ger- 
man successors of Spinoza, so much as from the more 
original source. He wrote for the many, and they for the 
few, yet they and he alike followed the same master. 

It may surprise some to hear Goethe's name thus joined 
to Spinoza's. They have never regarded him 
as a pantheist. He has had multitudes of read- G f "iTs^ec- 
ers, and still has not a few, whom his superb "lews? 
sentences charm, but who do not perceive his 
underlying theory of God and the world. What that the- 
ory was we need first of all to know ; and that our fairness 
may be above suspicion, it shall be given chiefly in his 
own words. 

He has given us an account of the early working of his 



188 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

mind on religious subjects. Referring to the 
ticism. Scep " Lisbon earthquake, which occurred in his sixth 

year, he says, " The boy who was forced to put 
up with frequent recitals of the whole matter, was not a 
little staggered. God, the creator and preserver of heaven 
and earth, whom the explanation of the first article of the 
creed declared so wise and benignant, having given both 
the just and the unjust a prey to the same destruction, 
had not manifested himself, by any means, in a fatherly 
character. In vain the young mind strove to resist these 
impressions." 1 This sceptical bent, he adds, was strength- 
ened by the ravages of a hail-storm at Frankfort the year 
after. He had a boy's enthusiasm for Frederick the 
Great, which his friends, wickedly, as he thought, did not 
share. " In this way," \\e says, "I was thrown back upon 
myself; and as, in my sixth year, after the earthquake at 
Lisbon, the goodness of God had become to me in some 
measure suspicious, so I began now, on account of Fred- 
erick the Second, to doubt the justice of the world." 2 It 
would seem that, with his faith in God, his reverence also 
declined. For he says, referring to a later period in his 
life, "I had believed, from my youth upwards, that I stood 
on very good terms with my God ; nay, I even fancied to 
myself, according to various experiences, that he might 
even be in arrears to me ; and I was daring enough to 
think that I had something to forgive him. The presump- 
tion was founded on my infinite good-will, to which, as it 
seemed to me, he should have given better assistance." 3 
These admissions are certainly enough to show that 

i Autobiography (Bohn's edition), Vol. I., p. 19. 
2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 33. 3 Ibid., p. 201. 



PANTHEISM. 189 

Goethe's faith in the positive teachings of Christianity had 
been undermined, and to bear out De Quincey's charge, 
that he "so corrupted and clouded his mind, as not to 
look up to God with the interest of reverence and awe, 
but merely with the interest of curiosity." 
• Passing, now, from the negative to the positive side of 
Goethe's creed, we come at once upon the essence of Spi- 
nozism. This is his dogmatic position, whatever he may 
have rejected as a sceptic. Mr. Lewes, one of his most 
ardent admirers, says, " In his conception of the universe 
he could not separate God from it. Such a con- 

Proofs that 

ception revolted him. He animated the uni- he was a 

x . pantheist. 

verse with God; he animated fact with divine 
life ; he saw in reality the incarnation of the ideal ; he 
saw in morality the high and harmonious action of all 
human tendencies ; he saw in art the highest representa- 
tion of life." 1 But w r e are not forced to take the testi- 
mony of another, in learning the speculative views of 
Goethe. He himself has borne witness. At the age of 
twenty-one, through the works of Bayle, he became ac- 
quainted with the theories of Giordano Bruno, the pan- 
theist of the sixteenth century. For this author he con- 
ceived a warm sympathy, notwithstanding Bayle's crit- 
icisms. And in his note-book, containing comments on 
what he read, is the following : " To discuss God apart 
from nature is both difficult and perilous ; it is as if we 
separated the soul from the body. We know the soul 
only through the medium of the body, and God only 
through nature. Hence the absurdity, as it seems to me, 
of accusing those of absurdity who philosophically have 

i Life and Works of Goethe (Boston, 185G), Vol. I., p. 74. 



190 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

united God with the world. For everything which exists 
necessarily pertains to the essence of God, because God is 
the one Being whose essence includes all things. Nor 
does the Holy Scripture contradict this, although we dif- 
ferently interpret its dogmas, each one according to his 
own views. All antiquity thought in the same way; an 
unanimity which to me has great significance. To me 
the judgment of so many men speaks highly for the ra- 
tionality of the doctrine of emanation ; though I am of 
no sect, and grieve much that Spinoza should have coupled 
this pure doctrine with his detestable errors." 1 This 
judgment of Spinoza Goethe afterwards reversed, upon 
farther acquaintance, as we shall see. In 'saying that the 
Scriptures are not opposed to pantheism, he simply agrees 
with other readers who have made their wish father to 
their thought. And in the same way he mistakes the 
monotheism of antiquity, expressed in the mystical lan- 
guage of the East, for downright pantheism. But what 
the quotation brings clearly out is, that Goethe was essen- 
tially a pantheist at this period of his life. 

The faith thus early adopted was not a mere enthusiasm 
to be given up with youth. It marked the manhood and 
old age of our author as well. His views were constantly 
crystallizing more and more into this form. In his twenty- 
sixth year he procured the works of Spinoza and studied 
them for himself. About the same time he also made the 
acquaintance of Jacobi, who, like himself, was 
jacobi With rev °l vm g5 though never more than half believ- 
ing, the doctrines of the great master. Here is 
his record of what he then thought, given in the account 

i Life and Works of Goethe, Vol. I., p. 103. 



PANTHEISM. 191 

of his conversations with Jacobi. " Happily, I had already 
prepared if not fully cultivated myself on this side, having 
in some degree appropriated the thoughts and mind of an 
extraordinary man ; and though my study of him had been 
incomplete and hasty, I was yet already conscious of im- 
portant influences derived from this source. This mind, 
which had worked u])on me thus decisively, and which was 
destined to affect so deeply my whole mode of thinking, 
was Spinoza. After looking through the world in vain 
to find a means of development for my strange nature, I 
at .last fell upon the Ethics of this philosopher. Of what 
I read out of the work, and of what I read into it, I can 
give no account. Enough that I found in it a sedative for 
my passions, and that a free, wide view over the sensible 
and moral world, seemed to open before me." x He de- 
clares himself especially pleased with Spinoza's definition 
of love to God, and of all love, — making it a sentiment 
which is to be regarded as a kind of personal luxury, and 
to be cherished by the person exercising it for his own 
sake, with no reference to any effect it may produce out- 
wardly. " If I love thee, what is that to thee ? " came thus 
to be one of Goethe's favorite sayings. But the underlying 
principle, though looking very much like disinterestedness 
in one view of it, would excuse hatred, or any other evil 
passion, making it nothing to any but ourselves if we 
choose to entertain the most malicious feelings. It is in 
this same connection, still referring to Jacobi, that he says, 
" I could not comprehend what he communicated to me 
of his state of mind ; so much the less indeed, because I 
could form no idea as to my own. Still, as he was far in 

1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 26. 



192 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TJEUTH. 

advance of me in philosophical thought, and even in the 
study of Spinoza, he endeavored to guide and enlighten 
my obscure efforts." * 

They are the less intelligent of the friends of Goethe 

who deny that there is pantheism in his writings; who 

accuse us of reading it into, rather than in his pages. He 

disdains all such apology, and is at war with 

wished to those who make it for him, as shown by the 

be known ' J 

nozift P1 " words just quoted. They may affirm that his 
works should be read without suspicion ; but he, 
in a calm review of his life, declares that Spinoza " affected 
deeply his whole mode of thinking." As surely as the 
same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter, 
so surely all that Goethe wrote could be, in its religious 
aspects, only pantheistic. Herder says of him, alluding to 
a later period in his life, " The only Latin author ever seen 
in his hand was Spinoza." He often confessed, while 
arguing with friends, that he thought it better to know 
God with Spinoza, than to believe in him with Jaeobi. 
Gall's phrenology pleased him, " because it connected man 
with nature more intimately than was done in the old 
schools, showing the identity of all mental manifestation 
in the animal kingdom." " I believe in God, is a beautiful 
and praiseworthy phrase," he said ; " but to recognize 
God in all his manifestations, that is true holiness on 
earth." 2 He failed to see anything exceptional or super- 
natural in Christ ; his greatness did not stand alone, but 
was merely of " as divine a kind as was ever seen on earth. 
If I am asked whether it is in my nature to pay him devout 
reverence, I say — certainly. I bow before him as the 

1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 27. 2 Life and Works, Vol. II., p. 397. 



PANTHEISM. 193 

divine manifestation of the highest morality. 
If I am asked whether it is in my nature to ^"^ 
reverence the sun, I again say — certainly. For 
he is likewise a manifestation of the highest Being. I 
adore in him the light and the productive power of God, 
by which we live, and move, and have our being." l Mr. 
Lewes says, "Goethe's theosophy was that of Spinoza, 
modified by his own poetical tendencies ; it was not a 
geometrical, but a poetical pantheism. In it the whole 
universe was conceived as divine ; not as a lifeless mass, 
but as the living manifestation of Divine Energy ever 
flowing forth into activity." 2 In the eighty-first year of his 
life, while completing the second part of his Faust, Goethe 
said, " What is all intercourse with nature if we merely 
occupy* ourselves with individual material parts, and do 
not feel the breath of the spirit which prescribes to every 
part its direction, and orders or sanctions every deviation 
by means of an inherent law ? " Not only does he deify 
nature, but makes man a part of it, as in the following 
words: "I had come to look upon my indwelling poetic 
talent altogether as nature. The exercise of this poetic 
gift could indeed be excited and determined by circum- 
stances, but its most joyful, its richest action was spon- 
taneous, nay, even involuntary." 3 Here, then, we have 
the pantheistic spontaneity ; that fatalism of Spinoza which 
makes necessity essential to liberty. He found 
m himself a creative power, acting automatically, ^[^ neces ~ 
in the free play of which he sought to escape, 
from all tumults. 4 This is the power which he described 

i Life and Works, Vol. IT., pp. 397,398. 2 Ibid., ; .»'.». 

s Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 66. * Ibid., p. 38. 

13 



194 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

in his Prometheus, a poem which both Lessing and Jacobi 
pronounced thoroughly pantheistic. The play of Egmont 
assumes all along the presence of a divine force working 
through human action in obedience to its own fatal ten- 
dencies. "Man imagines that he directs his life, that he 
governs his actions, when in fact his existence is irresistibly 
controlled by his destiny." One of the most admired pas- 
sages in the whole play is the following, in which the 
doctrine of a free necessity is taught : " I see before me 
spirits, who, still and thoughtful, weigh in ebon scales the 
doom of princes and of many thousands. Slowly the beam 
moves up and down ; deeply the judges appear to ponder; 
at length one scale sinks, the other rises, breathed on by 
the caprice of destiny, and all is decided." Goethe would 
carry this doctrine of a fate, working unhindered in and 
through man, so far as to make men irresponsible for their 
religious beliefs. " In faith everything depends on the fact 
of believing ; what is believed is perfectly indifferent. 
Faith is a profound sense of security for the present and 
future ; and this assurance springs from confidence in an 
immense, all-powerful, and inscrutable being. The firm- 
ness of this confidence is the one grand point ; but what 
we think of this being depends on our other faculties, on 
even our circumstances, and is wholly indifferent." l 

We should hardly expect a writer, whose chosen sphere 
is poetry and fiction, to make his theoretical views very 
prominent. We must look for them, rather, in the general 
tone of his works, and in the spirit actuating his favorite 
characters. Goethe held that it is the business of litera- 
ture not to teach or mould men, but to paint the life of 

* Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 15, 



PANTHEISM. 195 

nature and society. Claiming to be only an artist in all 
his writings, he was careful not to give them a dogmatic 
or controversial air. Nevertheless, the under-current of 
theory is traceable almost everywhere ; nor is 
he able always to keep back decisive utter- Tone of his 

J L writings. 

ances of his views. We have just noticed some 
of these; and still others remain, for one or two of which 
room shall be made. In his Wilhelm Meister the follow- 
ing words are put into the mouth of Theresa, one of the 
least faulty characters in the work : " I cannot understand , 
how any one can believe that God speaks to us through 
books and histories. If the universe does not immediately 
explain our connection with him, if our own heart does 
not explain our obligation to ourselves and others, we can 
scarcely expect to derive that knowledge from books, 
which seldom do more than give names to ourerrois." 1 
Even in the noble poem of Faust, that grandest creation 
of Goethe's genius, he does not keep his pantheistic creed 
out of sight. Margaret fears that the man she so tenderly 
loves is not a Christian. He evades her questions, and 
strives to quiet her mind by uttering this rhapsody : — ■ 

" The All-einbracer 
AU-sustainer, 

Doth he not embrace, sustain 
Thee, me, himself? 
Lifts not the heaven its dome above ? 
Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie? 
And beaming tenderly with looks of love, 
Climb not the everlasting stars on high ? 
Are we not gazing in each other's eyes ? 

1 Wilhelm Meister (Bohn's edition), p. 430. 



196 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Nature's impenetrable agencies, — 

Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain, 

Viewless, or visible to mortal ken, 

Around thee weaving their mysterious reign? 

Fill thence thy heart, how large soe'er it be, 

And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest, 

Then call it what thou wilt, — Bliss ! Heart ! Love ! God ! 

I have no name for it — 'tis feeling all. 

Name is but sound and smoke 

Shrouding the glow of heaven." 

This confession of faith, put into the mouth of Faust, 
fails to satisfy Margaret. It strengthens the suspicion 
that her lover is not a Christian, though it makes ample 
room for the religion she professes, and for all the sad in- 
discretion into which she has been tempted. He, and she, 
and the religious faith of each, and the wild love which 
has drawn them together, are alike but forthputtings of 
the divine essence of all things, every motion of which is 
sacred, and to obey which is our true worship for the time 
being, though external standards of right should condemn 
the act, and only feelings of bitter remorse result from it. 
ISTo critic has been bold enough to claim that he fully un- 
derstands this poem. Yet the clew to it, if I mistake not, 
is Goethe's own experience. As in nearly all his works, 
so here, only more profoundly, he deals with those deep 
heart-troubles which his own wild doings had occasioned, 
and seeks repose in that pantheistic scheme which makes 
all human conduct both fatal and divine. In all his writ- 
ings, as in those now quoted, Goethe claims that he is 
purely an artist. But he holds that it is the province of 
art to represent life. Yet life means the free play of all 
the forces of nature, of which every passion or instinct of 



PANTHEISM. 197 

man is a part, and the artist mnst first experience what- 
soever he would represent. Nothing in our humanity is 
evil, but it is altogether sacred and divine. True holiness 
forbids us to repress any longing, and consists in acting 
out to their utmost all onr § impulses and desires. "The 
result of all my thoughts and endeavors was the old reso- 
lution to investigate inner 'and outer nature, and to allow 
her to rule herself in loving imitation. I sought to free 
myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to re- 
gard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from 
man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to 
act upon me, each after its own kind." 1 

Now, the impression which this pantheistic view of life 
and the function of the writer makes on us, must -depend 
almost altogether upon the nature of the subjects which 
happen to be treated. The compass of the instrument is 
without limit; and the tones it gives forth will excite 
joy or pain, at the pleasure of the performer. 
Goethe's theo y enables him to charm that which J} 10 , two 

J Goethcs. 

is highest, and gratify that which is lowest, in 
human nature. He stands within a pantheon where our 
noblest and basest passions may all be gathered. If we 
complain that he throws a halo of divinity about vice and 
crime, we must also own that he paints virtue in some of 
its sublirner forms. He makes no difference in kind be- 
tween the -good and the bad, but honors them both alike 
in their turn. There are two Goethes, and while listen- 
ing to one we almost doubt the existence of the other. 
We see nothing to offend our moral sense, for instance, 

1 Autobiography, Vol. I., pp. 469,470. 



198 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

while we look at him in his - scientific studies, 
dent of Here the subject is one which hardly admits 

nature. 

of moral distinctions. The pantheist may deal 
with natural phenomena as justly as the Christian, though 
indulging a worship of nature which Christianity forbids. 
Goethe might have been a great naturalist, had he not 
chosen to be a j:>oet. As it is, his name will never cense 
to be mentioned with honor by the friends of science. 
He was an observer, rather than an interrogator of na- 
ture; and like the idealist that he was, his conclusions 
were generally the starting-points in researches : yet he 
established facts, and threw out hints, which have led 
on to some of the most marvellous results in scientific 

thinking. The history of comparative anatomy 

cannot be written without reference to him. 
His discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man over- 
turned a false theory in science which had prevailed for 
centuries ; it went far to establish the truth, so fruitful in 
the hands of his successors, that the osseous structures of 
all living animals are built up after a single pattern. He 
it was, too, who first called attention to the fact that the 
skull, in man and all animals, is simply a terminal verte- 
bra in the spinal column, more or less expanded/ Scien- 
tific men hailed this discovery, as they did the other, with 
delight ; and from it sprang the doctrine, now established, 
that all the bone any animal has is back-bone, — either 

the main column or one or more of its offshoots. 

In botany. 

In botany, also, Goethe's work on the Metamor- 
phoses of Plants may be said to have suggested, if it did 
not originate, what is now the distinctive doctrine and 
boasted glory of modern science. He showed, more or 



PANTHEISM. 199 

less successfully, that all plants conform to a single type 
in their structure ; that in their development, from stage 
to stage, they only repeat the universal type, — embody- 
ing it now imperfectly, and now in forms which approach 
perfection. This type he declared to be the leaf; and he 
proved, by a valid process, that even fruits and flowers are 
but modified leaves. Since, however, many plants lack 
what may be properly termed a leaf, some more general 
type was sought. The result was the discovery of the 
cell, which is common to animals and plants, thus laying 
the basis of absolute unity in nature. To other men, ad- 
vocates of the so-called development theory, belongs the 
credit of working out this discovery to its wonderful re- 
sults. l r et they all name Goethe as the master who 
gave them the right clew to nature, and an impulse which 
still carries them forward. In optics Goethe was not so 
successful. We have seen that he did not belong to the 
school of inductive philosophy. The unity of nature was 
with him a transcendental truth. Possibly this was the 
secret of his opposition to the Newtonian doc- 
trine that light is a compound substance. Look- 
ing for unity in all things, he assumed that light must be 
a simple substance; and he proclaimed this theory, un- 
fortunately, w T hen he had happened to observe a single 
fact which seemed to him to confirm it. The theory was 
a mistake. That doctrine of nature which had led him 
aright in the other cases, here betrayed him into error. 
Yet he fought for his theory as long as he lived. Neither 
argument nor ridicule could move him. He experimented, 
and argued, and wrote, with a constantly growing zeal. 
He contended that his doctrine of light outweighed in 



200 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

value all the other achievements of his life. The fact that 
certain a-priori thinkers, Hegel among them, inclined to 
believe his theory, enabled him to bear the derision of 
scientific men far and near. 

In one class of his purely literary works, too, 
which 8 he Goethe's pantheism does not greatly shock our 
advantage, moral convictions. I allude to those which are 
on classic subjects, simply reviving the spirit 
of antiquity, or which deal chiefly with the nobler tenden- 
cies of human nature. In all his works, even those which 
deify wickedness, we may choose out passages admirable 
for their moral tone ; but this lofty spirit is characteristic 
of some, as it is not of others. His shorter 
poems* 1 " poems, if we sift out a class, give charming 
utterance to almost everything bright or good in 
human life. He has written lyrics which might serve as 
vehicles of the purest emotion. In their simplicity and 
truth to nature, they are equal to the finest models of the 
ancients. His Iphigenia in Tauris, also, is worthy of his 
great powers. He transports himself into the serene air 
of antiquity, lives amid its scenes, breathes its loftiest 
spirit. Sophocles himself could not speak more 
in TauSs* nobly of the pure but fated daughter of Agamem- 
non. The guile of the ancient Greek is allowed 
to come out, in her dealing with the Taurian king; and 
here Goethe shows more sympathy with her fault than we 
could wish. But in everything essential to womanhood, as 
judged by the standard of those days, — in filial devotion, 
patriotism, maidenly innocence, and the sacrificial spirit, 
— he makes her fill out the highest ideal. Nor 

Egmont. m ° 

can it be denied that there are passages in the 



PANTHEISM. 201 

play of Egmont which are not only worthy even of a 
Shakespeare's genius, but in which the sharpest morality 
can see little to condemn. It is true that he violently dis- 
torts history, and shows a fiercely democratic scorn for 
social distinctions ; yet we almost forget this, together 
with the doctrine of fatalism running through the play, 
while we read the address to sleep, put into the mouth of 
the imprisoned Egmont; and as Clara, who had hoped to 
be his bride, says to the cowering Netherlander, " I have 
neither arms, nor the strength of a man ; but I have that 
which ye all lack — courage and contempt of danger. 
O that my breath could kindle your souls ! That, press- 
ing you to this bosom, I could arouse and animate you ! 
Come, I will march in your midst. As a waving banner, 
though weaponless, leads on a. gallant army of warriors, so 
shall my spirit hover, like a flame, over your ranks, while 
love and courage shall unite the dispersed and wavering 
multitude into a terrible host." One other specimen of 
this better class of Goethe's writings I must not fail to 
name — the beautiful poem of Hermann and 

Hermann 

Dorothea. Nothing sweeter can be found in and Poro- 

° . thea. 

the whole range of idyllic or epic poetry. The 

description of the train of exiles, of the meeting of, the 
lovers, of the old landlord and his wife, of the village pas- 
tor and doctor, of the garden, the vineyard, the encamp- 
ment, the harnessing of the horses, the fin-ding of Dorothea, 
her meeting with Hermann at the well, their walk home- 
ward in the evening, and the betrothal, cannot be surpassed 
for vivid and charming naturalness. Yet the whole story 
covers but a single day, — too short a time, we feel, for an 
entirely new love thus to ripen ; and the noble Dorothea 



202 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

seems to forget too easily her former lover, but lately slain 
in battle, whose golden pledge she still wears on her 
finger. 

From this class of works, in which the law of 

W herein liis 

theory spontaneity yields so little to offend us, we turn 

works evil. . . 

to another. Here the influence of pantheism, 
glorifying whatever it touches, fails to satisfy our moral 
convictions. The spontaneity which charmed us where all 
the tendencies were right, begins to repel us where they 
are wrong. We hold that man has a lower nature, which 
is to be repressed, as well as a higher nature, which may 
act itself out freely. It is the consistency of Goethe, as' a 
pantheist, that offends us. He dares to be true to his 
theory, — to show how it deifies the bad no less than the 

good. His Faust has been mentioned. Could 

Faust. 

anything show more clearly what bitter fruit 
pantheism may be made to yield, than that wonderful 
poem? The longing of man to gratify even his lowest 
passions is sacred, and cannot be resisted ; yet the gratifi- 
cation is all the time plunging him into deeper wretched- 
ness. The only escape from this miserable fate which 
Goethe can suggest, is " renunciation," — not the surrender 
of one's self to the holy and divine law of Christ, but to 
this same foredoomed and tormenting activity. 

How indiscriminate pantheism is in dealing with right 

and wrong, may be seen in our author's first 
neriich- famous production, Goetz von Berlichingen. 

in°"en. 

Here the law of spontaneity is seen at work in 
political relations. The personality of the hero, and not 
public justice, is made the basis of action. He finds the 
state in his own impulses, and he dares to obey this inward 



PANTHEISM. 203 

authority, regardless of external standards. Goetz is the 
ideal of a predatory baron of mediaeval times. He dwells 
in his own castle, surrounded by his retainers, in German 
wilds. To the Emperor Maximilian he swears allegiance ; 
yet no one but himself is to say what that allegiance 
requires of him. He often shows it by trampling on the 
imperial commands. With his fellow-barons, he is per- 
petually at war. Goethe paints him as a champion of the 
weak; but in defending some he wantonly wrongs others, 
as the following case will show : A poor tailor owes two 
hundred florins, which he is unable to pay. He applies to 
Goetz for help. The sympathies of the baron are touched, 
and, lacking the . money himself, he waylays and robs a 
couple of merchants, and out of the booty the tailor's 
wants are supplied. Thus is an impulse of generosity 
made to outweigh justice. The deed goes with the flighty 
purpose, for the law of duty is within. Not established 
principles, but that subjective law is the guide, and it may 
modify outward standards, or trample on them, as to itself 
seems good. Many natural traits in Goetz are noble. He 
values his reputation for honor among those who are of 
his own class. His word once given is sacred. He hesi- 
tates to break his parole even with a treacherous foe, and 
at the risk of his life. Viewed in the light of his own 
personality, and of his generosity to those whom he be- 
friends, his conduct is admirable ; but as judged by con- 
science, in view of the rights of society, only the verdict of 
strong disapproval can be given. The theory 
of morals which Goethe thus favors is ably of moS7 
refuted by Muller, where he says, "An action 
which contradicts the moral law is not justified by the mere 



204 HALF TJRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

fact that, by an anomaly within an anomaly, it happens 
to proceed not from selfish but from good motives in some 
one particular case. Man is to regard the objective con- 
nection of a mode of action contrary to the law with the 
principle of selfishness as an unconditional veto against 
that action, even though he may imagine that he has in 
some special case the most excellent motives prompting 
him thereto. Indeed, in the very self-assertion of his own 
subjectivity, as the determining and deciding power in the 
face of the plain dictates of the moral law, there is an 
arrogance side by side with noble-mindedness, enthusiasm, 
and what not, whose real source is selfishness." 1 It is 
with reference to Goethe's doctrine that Miiller thus 
argues ; of whom he says, in another place, " There is cer- 
tainly a tendency, in Goethe's view of the world, to regard 
power and activity as the essence of morality." Much 
might be quoted, besides what appears in Goetz, to sustain 
this charge. The following lines are a specimen, in which 
complaint is made that men obey external rules to the 
neglect of the impulses of their own natures : — 

" Laws are a fatal heritage, — 

Like a disease, an heir-loom dread ; 
Their curse they trail from age to age, 

And furtively abroad they spread. 
Reason doth nonsense, good doth evil grow ; 
That thou'rt a grandson is thy woe. 
But of the law on man impressed 
By nature's hand, there's ne'er a thought." 

We need not wonder that Goetz was read and admired 

i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book I., Pt. I., Chap. III. 



PANTHEISM. 205 

v 

by all Germany. Besides graphic pictures of 
the wild life described, it fell in with the pre- J£ P°P*iar- 
vailing temper of the times. Goethe is sur- 
passed by no Writer for skill in giving such food as 
the public taste may chance to demand. He was fully 
aware of this gift, and in his Autobiography tells us, at 
considerable length, what pains he took to cultivate it. 
He watched the currents of popular feeling ; he was care- 
ful to launch each new literary venture on a favoring tide. 
Goetz was written for the wild, revolutionary spirit which 
he saw surging about Mm. It gave the masses of his 
countrymen, ground under foreign oppressors, just the 
voice of proud defiance which they wanted. It pleased 
their national vanity, and made them feel how right it is 
to disobey tyrants. Goethe held that it is the function of 
literature to paint life; and in his first venture he had 
succeeded so well, that a whole people read in his words 
the story of its greatness, its wrongs, its too long smoth- 
ered wrath, its flaming thirst for vengeance. 

The evil of pantheism, in making man altogether divine, 
and putting him under the dominion of fate, comes more 
clearly out in the Sorrows of Werther, Goethe's 
second great literary venture. Here it is not w<?rther.° f 
superiority to civil law, but the right to dispose 
of his own life, which the individual is made to claim. 
The theory that all human impulses are sacred, and a law 
to themselves, is fearlessly carried out. Even the suicidal 
tendency is allowed free course. Werther was read, on 
its first appearance, with unbounded enthusiasm. It paints 
that experience which almost all persons undergo in pass- 
ing from childhood to manhood or womanhood. It enters 



206 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

fully into this sentimental period, and describes, in most 
sympathetic words, the vague unrest, the longings, the 
disgusts, from which so many youth suffer. Hence its 
amazing popularity. Every lovesick suitor, unrecognized 
genius, discarded sweetheart, and hopeless aspirant for 
social position or public honor, read it as the utterance of 
a personal sorrow. If it had been a satire, ridiculing their 
moodiness, it might have saved them. But they found in 
it no such purpose. It not only voiced forth their heart- 
weariness to this large class of readers, but pictured their 
unrest as something divine and sacred. They were driven 
on by a fate to which ready obedience is always noble. 
They could say, " The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, 
by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny, 
and all that we can do is, in cool self-possession, to hold 
the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now 
to the right, now to the left, avoiding a stone here or a 
precipice there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? 
And who, indeed, can remember the point from which it 
started ? " * Their weariness of life is not portrayed as a 
weakness ; they are not instructed to rise above it. On 
the contrary, it is made a part of that which constitutes 
their true nobility. It is the play of the divine life in 
their human consciousness. " The resolution to preserve 
my inward nature intact," says Goethe, " according to its 
peculiarities, and to let external nature influence me 
according to its qualities, impelled me to the strange ele- 
ment in which Werther is written." 2 

It is not necessary to claim, here, that Goethe meant 
especially to justify the practice of suicide, in writing this 

1 Egmont. 2 Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 470. 



PANTHEISM. 207 

work. We may admit what he says in his Auto- 
biography, that Werther "neither approves nor ence? flu ~ 
censures, but develoj^s sentiments and actions 
in their consequences." 1 Undoubtedly he was not con- 
scious of any didactic aim. Perhaps he did not even see 
that Werther grew logically out of his philosophical 
views. Yet that it is a work which pantheism legiti- 
mates no one can deny ; nor can the influence of it, on a 
person of morbid or suicidal temper, be at all doubtful. 
Goethe himself says of it, "My friends were led astray by 
my work ; for they thought that poetry ought to be 
turned into reality ; that such a moral was to be imitated, 
and that, at any rate, one ought to shoot himself. What 
had first happened here among a few afterwards took 
place among the larger public." 2 A great many cases of 
self-murder came to Goethe's notice, in which the victims 
attributed their rash act to the influence of Werther. He 
was overwhelmed with letters from persons meditating 
suicide, and he made journeys into various parts of the 
country to dissuade poor sufferers from such a step. Yet 
his interest in these unfortunates was mainly artistic. For 
the most part, he studied their disease, not to cure it, but 
for the sake of that culture which he sought in every 
phase of human experience. " I think it is as absurd to 
say that a man who destroys himself is a coward, as 
to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever," 
are words which he puts into the mouth of Werther. 
The morbid yearning for death is inevitable ; it works like 
a fever in the veins. The great spirit of nature, revealed 
in the consciousness of the victim, impels him forward till 
the deadly shot is fired. 

i Autobiography, Vol. 1^ p. 513. s Ibid., Vol. I., pp. 511, 512, 



208 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Goethe confesses that Werther is mainly himself. The 
work describes a morbid experience which he went 
through, and which came near proving fatal. He became 

ardently attached to a young woman, and was 
the work. made wretched by learning that she had been 

already betrothed to one of his friends. Her 
womanly firmness, in refusing his attentions, drove him to 
despair. He even contemplated suicide. " Among a con- 
siderable collection of weapons," says he, "I possessed a 
handsome, well-polished dagger. This I laid every night 
by my bed, and before I extinguished the candle, I tried 
whether I could succeed in plunging the sharp point a 
couple of inches into my heart." l But while he was in 
this state, it happened that another young man, of his 
circle, did commit suicide under a disappointment precisely 
like his own. This gave Goethe his chance. He began 
to laugh #t his own melancholy, which he saw reflected in 
the act of his friend. It is greatly to be regretted that he 
did not imitate Cervantes, and conceive his Werther in 
the ludicrous vein of Don Quixote ; for then he might 
have saved others, while cleansing his own bosom of its 
perilous stuff. But he chose rather to turn his friend's 
fate into sympathetic narrative and glowing eulogy. The 
young man thus suddenly cut off by his own hand was 
widely known and admired. His death, in the circum- 
stances, caused a deep sensation. There was a romance 
in his fate which every one wished to know. Goethe, 
seeing this double opportunity, resolved at once to cure 
himself by turning the whole affair into a story. Hence 
the book, and the eagerness of people to read it. He 

i Autobiography, Vol. I., pp. 508, 509. 



PANTHEISM. 209 

says, speaking of himself and his readers, " Tortured by 
unsatisfied passions, by no means excited from without to 
important actions, with the sole prospect that we must 
adhere to a dull, spiritless citizen-life, we became — in 
gloomy wantonness — attached to the thought, that we 
could at all events quit life at pleasure. This feeling was 
so general, that Werther produced its great effect pre- 
cisely because it struck a chord everywhere." 1 He saw 
the train laid for him, that is ; and, quick as he ever was 
to see the popular craving, he applied his lighted match. 
The blaze was prodigious, so long as the material which 
fed it lasted. The glow of composition, and public ap- 
plause, wrought a cure in his own case. But in thus free- 
ing himself he put a poisoned cup into other hands, the 
deadly effects of which cannot be now computed. 

Goethe had made free use of the names of his best 
friends in Werther. Greatly to their surprise, they found 
a very undesirable notoriety thrust upon them. 

mi • e- Complaints 

They received many letters 01 sympathy on of his 
account of this usage, and were obliged to avoid 
the curious gaze of the public. A deep stain rested on 
Goethe's honor, and he was made aware of their honest 
displeasure. Strange to say, he neither denied the charge 
nor felt sorry for it. It seemed to him to be no occasion 
for a breach of friendship. All had been done in the 
interest of art, for which every one should be glad to 
suffer. His friends should regard themselves as a sacrifice 
on that high altar to which he also was devoted. Thus 
had they helped him in his wonderful achievement ; and 
they were wanting in artistic spirit if now disposed to 

1 Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 507. 

14 



210 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

complain. The apology did not suffice. Even if honestly- 
meant, which seems hardly possible, it was taken as insult 
added to injury. It is not much of a privilege to be dis- 
sected alive, even though some new truth of physiology 
should thereby be shown. It was one thing to the 
painter, and quite another to his blooming wife, whom he 
had just married, when he exclaimed, in the excess of his 
rapture at her beauty, " Into paint will I grind thee, my 
bride." 

It is important to notice here one other of Goethe's 

works, the Wilhelm Meister, — which shows the 
Meister 11 working of the law of spontaneity in social and 

domestic relations. If he made pantheism 
break the bonds of civil order in Goetz, and of probation 
itself in Werther, in Wilhelm Meister it dissolves all fam- 
ily ties, and confuses our notions of intercourse between 
man and man. Great as Goethe is, and admirable in the 
handling of noble subjects, we cannot approve, but must 
earnestly condemn, while we see him so applying his the- 
ory as to place vice and virtue on the same pedestal, and 
throw the garb of innocency around crime. His doctrine 
of abandonment to art may have satisfied his own con- 
science in this ; but even art has its limit, — a thus far and 
no farther, - — which it should sacredly heed. If it be true, 
as Goethe has said, that the writer can describe only what 
he has experienced, no one can envy him his preparation 
for Wilhelm Meister. But he gave the word " experi- 
ence " a broad sense, including that sympathy with nature, 
and with other men, which we feel, and which, aided by' 
the imagination, enables us to share in all the life about 
us. Whatever we may think of some of the events and 



PANTHEISM. 211 

characters in the work, therefore, and though much of it 
recalls what Goethe has told us of his own wild doings, 
yet we need not infer that he really went through such a 
life as he depicts to us. He experienced it artistically, for 
the sake of the culture which was his aim. There is one 
Book in Wilhelm Meister, entitled the Confessions of a 
Fair Saint, which the most exacting may read with pleas- 
ure. The subject of the story is a Moravian, in her 
religious faith ; and Goethe, while tracing the 
course of her outward and inward life, makes saint. alr 
most charming use of his knowledge of the 
Moravians, some of whom were among his dearest friends. 
Yet he seems to value their faith purely for artistic pur- 
poses, and he accounts for it in a wholly natural way, just 
as for any other social phenomenon, whether pleasing or 
repulsive. He intimates that the saintlike lady, whose 
story he is telling, is not altogether of a sane mind ; that 
he learned the facts in her history from a physician, who 
had treated her for mental disease ; that she had been 
unusually gay in early life ; from which she was turned, 
by a bitter disappointment in love, to seek solace in 
prayerful retirement. 1 And thus it turns out at last that 
the piety of the Moravians is good only as a charming 
story can be made out of it ; and that that story properly 
finds a place in the same volume with those of mere 
pleasure-seekers, since it was due to natural causes that 
the subject of it came to be so much unlike them. There 
is really the same defect in her as in those characters of 
the work which most offend us : it is the want of a clear 
ethical basis of conduct, — which was not a fault in 

i Wilhelm Meister (Bohn's edition), p. 326. Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 290. 



212 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Goethe's eye, as indeed it could not be, since his natural- 
ism did not recognize it as possible. Morality is but a 
part of nature ; and what men call conscience, and right 
and wrong in human conduct, are chiefly due to artificial 
rules and a false education. 

As Goethe's best characters are not ethically good, so 
his worst characters are never artistically bad. Even 
Philina is a creation that pleases us while we shut our 
eyes to the moral law. She is modelled on the theory that 
human beings are like the fowls of the air, and may live 
the same free life as they. Her conduct has no re- 

rhilina. n . ■_ J 

gard to external rules or proprieties, but springs 

wholly out of the unchastened impulses of her own heart. 

She is playful, generous, entertaining, sympathetic, not 

without genius, equal to any exigency ; yet she loves 

just when and how she will, and acts out every impulse of 

her nature, with no compunctions or regrets. She is a 

creature without a conscience, and flies from one pleasure 

to another, never shamed by her past follies, or having in 

view any object but present enjoyment. The Decalogue 

and Sermon on the Mount are no more a law to her, than 

to the bobolink which sings in the meadow. Mignon, all 

heart and soul, and whose poor little body so trembles in 

the storm of her own feelings, wins us. Yet 

Mignon. ° 

she, too, seems wholly destitute of an ethical 
nature. Her life is purely spontaneous, the evil in her 
working as freely as the good ; and the story of her parent- 
age makes that to be natural and inevitable, which our 
marriage laws and our conscience brand as infamous. The 
same may be said of nearly all the characters in Wilhelm 
Meister, — Mariana, Aurelia, Lothario, the Melinas, Serlo, 



PANTHEISM. 213 

Friedrich, the Countess. They have noble traits, and 

some of them have many ; yet no difference is 

put between the noble and the base in them, other char- 

x < acters. 

That which offends our moral sense is allowed 
the same freedom as that which we approve. The higher 
nature is no more sacred than the lower, and works it- 
self out no more spontaneously, irrespective of established 
laws or maxims. The work on Elective Affinities is, phil- 
osophically, a part of Wilhelm Meister ; and there the law 
of spontaneity, freeing men from positive restraints, and 
giving a loose rein to everything in their nature, 
overwhelms the loving Ottilie with a fatal sor- Affinities. 
row, destroys the domestic peace of Edward 
and Charlotte, and turns the most delightful of friendships 
into a ghastly tragedy. If men and women were angels, 
it might do for them to hold that all their " affinities " are 
divinely right, and should have free course. But con- 
scious as they are of tendencies which if indulged would 
result in a moral and social chaos, they need another 
law, — the law which warns them to put down the inward 
motions of sin, and look on the glory of Christ till changed 
into the same image. The noblest character in Wilhelm 
Meister, Natalia, has this fault — she never regards vice 
from the ethical point of view. And the same is true of 
Theresa. They follow the higher tendencies in humanity, 
yet seem to regard as equally innocent those who follow 
the lower. Wilhelm himself, who has been one 
of this latter class, Natalia receives as her hus- ^** H f and 

' Wilhelm. 

band, and adopts his child as her own, though 

aware of the wild life he has led, and which he is slow to 

abandon. Nothing in her conduct shows that she is 



214 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ruled by her moral nature. She is wholly aesthetic. Wil- 
helm and his roving friends are not objects of blame to 
her. They have followed their own bent, just as she has 
followed hers. Their doings were different from hers, 
owing to a difference in natural endowments and surround- 
ings. Even the Abbe, Goethe's ideal of a clergyman, re- 
gards the past life of Wilhelm as a wholesome schooling, 
through which he was fated to pass. He has acted as he 
felt impelled to, and is no more blameworthy than the 
robins, who choose their mates, and pillage, and sing, in 
the farmer's orchard. He has done nothing to sorrow 
over with a godly sorrow. Joined- to Natalia, whose 
stronger nature will control him, the verdict of the Abbe 
is, " You will never repent nor repeat your follies ; and this 
is the happiest destiny which can be allotted to man." 

From this notice of the works of Goethe I pass to the 

man himself. Did his pantheistic spirit bear 

theoretical the same fruit in his life as in his writings ? To 

views in -i ■, • n ■> ♦ • • 

his own ask the question is to answer it, tor his writings 

life. 

confessedly grew out of his life. He is Werther, 
he is Faust, he is Wilhelm Meister. No doubt it was his 
wish to be read purely as an artist. But we cannot dis- 
tinguish between him and his works, as we do between 
Raphael and the Transfiguration or Last Supper. He 
casts a roseate light upon sinful deeds. He makes a mode 
of life which is shamefully wrong, look beautiful and in- 
viting. He brings vice forward in such bewitching forms 
as to tempt the susceptible reader. Multitudes have ac- 
cepted his works, not as art, but as the true philosophy of 
life. Such they were to himself. He held that his nature 



pantheism:. 215 

was wholly divine; that each one of his impulses con- 
tained its own law ; that no external rule could 

His faults 

judge him. This faith he dared to practise: not to be 

J ° l passed 

and we need, for our own admonition, to see over - 
some of the evils into which it led him. This is my reply 
to those who say that the faults of Goethe should be 
covered up and forgotten. A writer in one of the English 
periodicals seeras to me to speak justly, where he says, 
"A certain school of philosophers has even become indig- 
nant with anybody who searches into the moral character 
of the illustrious dead, to see whether or not they con- 
formed strictly to the Ten Commandments. Surely, they 
hint, men of genius are not to be tested by the Ten Com- 
mandments. Xo heresy, however, can be so mischievous 
as that which teaches that there is, for different degrees of 
genius, a different moral code. Moral distinctions are a 
barrier erected by society between itself and danger, and 
are assiduously cultivated by educators and legislators to 
that end ; and this barrier is nowhere needed more than 
in the case of great genius. Great intellectual or material 
strength, unaccompanied by moral sensibility, is an enemy 
to mankind's happiness, quite as much as a wild beast is 
to the repose of an African village." l 

In noticing the faults of Goethe, which his views of 
life helped to develop, that which was noble and pleasing 
in him should not be kept out of sight. He 
had kind impulses ; he gave liberally of his Noble traits, 
means to the needy; he visited the wretched, 
and sought to make them forget their trouble ; he aided 

i Saturday Review, 1S68. 



216 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

poor students with his adyice and money ; he counselled 
young authors, gave them friendly criticism, recommended 
them to publishers. Such was the culture which he be- 
stowed on the better side of his nature. Thus did the 
more amiable tendencies in him blossom out and ripen, 
under the law of spontaneous action. But his culture 
was not limited to this sphere. It was as broad as his 
whole humanity. It embraced other tendencies not so 
admirable. He had, for instance, a natural dread of 
hardship, and loved a quiet, peaceful life. This trait he 
cherished ; and it was more sacred to him than popular 
rights, or the honor of his nation. He disliked to see the 
Germans rising in arms for their liberty, since the peaceful 
pursuit of culture would thereby be interrupted. He de- 
clared that lie was unconscious of such a sentiment as 

love of country. In trying to be a patriot, he 
patriotism, should be a hypocrite. All governments are 

only artificial devices ; one was just as bad as 
another, to him who made nature his rule; and all he 
asked of any was, to leave him free to act as he pleased. 
" When we have a place in the world where we can repose 
with our property," said he, " a field to nourish us, and a 
house to cover us, have we not there our fatherland? 
and have not thousands upon thousands got this ? and do 
they not live happy in their limited sphere ? Wherefore, 
then, this vain striving for a sentiment we neither have 
nor can have, — a sentiment. which only in certain nations, 
and in certain periods, is the result of many concurrent 
circumstances." These words were addressed to the peo- 
ple of Germany, the object being to dissuade them from 
making war on Napoleon, who was then moving to over- 



PANTHEISM. 217 

throw their nation. The argument is, that nature had not 
destined them for political dominion. Let them, therefore, 
quietly enjoy what happened to be theirs, indifferent to 
the civil power over them, which was no part of nature. 
But where were human liberty to-day, we may well ask, 
if such a doctrine had swayed the hearts of all men? 
Patriotic Germans have not yet forgiven Goethe for 
accepting the flatteries of Napoleon, and favoring his 
claims, even while the French army was laying their 
country waste; and they have proved, by their achieve- 
ments under William and Bismarck, securing to them an 
empire, and placing France at their mercy, that they were 
not vain in their aspirations, while the peace-loving poet 
was utterly mistaken. Mr. Lewes, apologizing for Goethe 
as he best can, says, " Without interest in political affairs, 
profoundly convinced that all salvation could come only 
through inward culture, and dreading disturbances mainly 
because they rendered such culture impossible, he was 
emphatically the ' child of peace,' and could at no 'period 
of his life be brought to sympathize with great struggles." 1 
Every high sentiment in us agrees with the Christian 
poet, when he says, — 

" Great truths are greatly won. Not found by chance, 
Nor wafted on the breath of summer-dream, 
But grasped in the dread struggle of the soul, 
Hard buffeting the adverse wind and stream ; 

" Wrung from the troubled spirit, in hard hours 
Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain, 
They spring like harvest from the well-ploughed field, 
And the soul feels it has not wept in vain." 

i Life and Works of Goethe, Vol. II., p. 168. 



218 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

But Goethe's method of culture calls forth from us no 
such response. The way which he prefers goes around 
the Gethsemanes and Calvarys of life. Though a prince 
of moral disorder, he loves repose, — that soft and dreamy 
peace which no outward trouble disturbs, while it allows 
free j^lay to each fond desire. 

Shrinking, as he thus did, from all hardship and pain, 
Goethe could not carry the law of spontaneity out thor- 
oughly in his life. His own peace of mind 
Sn^stent* obliged mm to repress some of his impulses, 
theory 3 an ^ to regulate even those which he indulged. 
He often held his natural sympathy in check ; 
says, " I carefully avoided seeing Schiller, Herder, the 
Duchess Amalia, in the coffin." The feeling of indigna- 
tion which springs in every heart at the sight of wrong- 
doing he sought to overcome. " He who hates vices hates 
men," was one of his strange maxims. We are to love all 
things just as they are, however bad. Nothing should 
excite our hatred or pity, but . only our joy. "He who 
rightly knows that all things follow from the necessity of 
the divine nature, and come to pass in conformity with 
the eternal laws of nature, will never meet with anything 
worthy of hatred or contempt ; neither will he commis- 
erate any one." 1 Thus taught Spinoza, and Goethe aimed 
to live out the precept. He made new friends, forsook 
old friends, moved from place to place, both gave and 
broke the tenderest pledges, as his plans or present com- 
fort seemed to require. "The most lovable heart," he 
said, " is that which loves most readily ; and that which 
er.sily loves also easily forgets." At one time he was 

i Spinoza's Ethics, Part IV., Prop. I., Scholium. 



PANTHEISM. 219 

attracted to the society of the Moravians ; but finding their 
piety irksome to him, and their morals too strict for his 
habits of life, he withdrew from them. 1 "It had become* 
a standing custom with me, whenever I read missionary 
intelligence to Fraulein von Klettenberg, which she was 
very fond of hearing, to take the part of the pagans 
against the missionaries, and praise their old condition as 
preferable to their new one." He went through a special 
course of training, that he might school himself to bear, 
without pain, unpleasant sights and sounds. He attended 
surgical lectures, with the view, he says, of freeing him- 
self " from all apprehension as to repulsive things. I have 
actually succeeded so far that nothing of this kind could 
ever put me out of my self-possession. But I sought to 
steel myself, not only against these impressions of the 
senses, but also against the infections of the imagination. 
And in this also I went so fir, that when a desire came 
over me once more to feel the pleasing shudder of youth, 
I could scarcely force it in any degree." 2 It will be seen, 
therefore, that his repression of nature did not grow out 
of a high moral purpose, but from the wish to avoid pain. 
He did not always repress what was evil in him, but 
often that which was good, and thus tried to give the evil 
unhindered sway. It was not as a Christian, but as an 
epicurean, that he sought to regulate the law of spontane- 
ous action. He had not the courage to carry out, on all 
sides, the doctrine which he puts into the mouth of Faust: 

" The scope of all my powers henceforth be this, 
To bare my breast to every pang, — to know- 
In my heart's core all human weal and woe, 

1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 33. 2 ibid., Vol. I., pp. 321, 322. 



220 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

To grasp in thought the lofty and the deep, 
Men's various fortunes on my breast to heap, 
To theirs dilate my individual mind, 
And share at length the shipwreck of mankind." 

It is greatly to be regretted that Goethe was 
little incon- not ever! more inconsistent with his theory than 
we have now seen. If he had put down some 
of the impulses which he freely indulged, his life might 
not have been, in some of its aspects, the sad picture 
which it is. No respectable critic, however friendly to 
him, has attempted to justify his domestic and social life. 
Even Dr. Hedge, in his Prose Writers of Germany, says, 
" Unquestionably he was no saint. His wildest admirers 
have sought no place for him in the Christian calendar. 
In reading Goethe we do not feel, as when reading Dante 
or Milton, that we are conversing with a pure and lofty 
spirit." His habit of trifling with maidenly but susceptible 
hearts was formed in early youth, and he defended the 
habit on purely subjective grounds, contending that the 
usages of society were artificial, and had no right to inter- 
fere with the action of nature. He refused all legal sanc- 
tion to his marriage, except so far as might be necessary 
for the entailment of his name and wealth. His view of 
the position and rights of a wife are given where he says, 
"A wife should manage her household properly, and not 
censure every little fancy of her husband, but always 
depend on his return." x It is certain that this large indul- 
gence of husbands, which he thus recommends to every 
wife, he took for granted in his own. Her life had but 
little acknowledged union with his. He was seldom seen 

1 Wilhelm Meister, p. 431. 



PANTHEISM. 221 

with her in the company of other persons. Her sad life 
wore on in seclusion. Other "fancies" were continually 
leading him abroad ; and into his house came the gay and 
aspiring, almost daily, to enjoy caresses which he denied 
to her. This manner of life caused Goethe no self- 
reproaches, for it grew logically out of his philosophical 
views. It was not wrong, but right, he would claim. It 
was the spirit of the universe coming to consciousness in 
him, and to let it act freely was obedience to the highest 
law. All the impulses of humanity are divine, was the 
major premise of his conduct ; and he carried the reasoning 
out into his practice, in the direction now shown, even to 
old age. This appears in the story of Bettine, who came 
to Weimar while yet a child. Goethe's fame attracted her. 
She felt the spell of his intellectual greatness ; to be his 
friend was the summit of her ambition. He saw to what 
her enthusiasm was carrying her, yet encouraged her love 
of his now superannuated person. He luxuriated in her 
affection for him, neither checking it nor seeking to elevate 
and chasten it, though it was wearing away the founda- 
tions of her moral nature. No sigh escaped him, but he 
smiled only the more blandly, while her brilliant but un- 
schooled nature was breaking from its early moorings, and 
drifting far out from the lights of Christian faith, where 
the storm which no one rules beat down upon her. It was 
Mrs. Browning, with her pure woman's heart, who had 
pity on the young girl, loving so unwisely, and who, in 
her poem bewailing Bettine's fate, exclaims, — 

" The bird tby childhood's playing 
Sent onward o'er the sea, — 
Thy dove of hope, — came back to thee 

Without a leaf ! Art laying 



222 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Its cold wing no sun can dry, 
Still in thy bosom secretly." 

It is said that something should be pardoned, 
to be made in Goethe's life, to his artistic spirit. His adven- 

to art. • . 

tures were studies preparatory to the exercise 
of his literary function. He needed to experience all those 
human feelings which he would describe. He held the 
maxim of the ancient artist, who said that one cannot 
paint a horse without first becoming a horse. It would be 
a relief to know that some of Goethe's doings were for 
this object, and not simply for the gratification of his 
natural desires ; that they were experienced only in sym- 
pathy, by the help of his imagination, though told as facts 
in his history. If we could grant this, then we should use 
it to explain what is noblest in his conduct as well as that 
which offends us. Thus his whole life becomes purely 
histrionic. When he is generous, when he gives to the 
poor and visits the wretched, just as when he trifles with 
the too confiding, he is not moved by a- benevolent pur- 
pose, but is simply gathering material for the next' story, 
play, or poem. He must become a suicide, in order to 
write Werther ; must go into the woods, and live like a 
robber, in order to do the character of Goetz full justice ; 
must become a stage-manager, and know actors and 
actresses intimately, in order to describe their rivalries, 
and jealousies, and quarrels. This artistic zeal made him 
partial to all the amusements of the theatre. He wrote 
many plays for the court-theatre at Weimar, and he aided 
in them as an actor, not only at home, but in the country 
around. The impression all along, in Wilhelm Meister, is 
that men may get their best schooling in the experiences 



PANTHEISM. 223 

of a theatrical career. Not in the sense of Shakespeare, 
but literally and seriously, he would have all the world a 
stage, and men and women merely players. Even though 
this be not the general rule, he at least is an artist, whose 
business is to paint life in all its phases; and what he 
would paint, he must somehow first make a part of him- 
self. 

But we ioin issue with Goethe on this defini- 

J m The obliga- 

tion. It is not the function of art, but of history tions of the 

and criticism, to deal with actual life. He who 
portrays life to us should discriminate between the bad 
and good ; should make his representations honor the 
right always, and condemn whatsoever is wrong. Thus 
only is he a trustworthy teacher, guarding us against evil, 
and begetting in us a love of what is pure, and true, and 
of good report. The ideal realm is that which belongs to 
art, and its moral purpose should be the same as that of 
criticism and history, — the ennobling of our better nature. 
It is therefore bound to avoid all subjects which are low, 
vile, or degrading in their nature, and to give us only such 
representations as shall appeal to our upward and godlike 
tendencies. Here it was that Goethe sadly failed. He 
puts before his readers, painted in colors wholly sympa- 
thetic, scenes which stimulate what is most grovelling in 
human nature. To his deep dishonor it must be said, that 
he does not teach us to abhor the vices of society; he does 
not limit his studies to what is worthy of imitation in life ; 
he does not take what is best in man, lift it up into the 
ideal realm, make it the material of his conceptions, and 
clothe it with especial charms, so as to draw us away from 
all that is vile and sinful, towards that life of pure and holy 



224 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

love which is the glory of the Father of our spirits. The 
artist is false to his great mission, and commits one of the 
darkest of crimes when he puts us face to face with that 
which stimulates the evil in our natures. It is his sacred 
duty to put all such temptations behind our backs ; to make 
us see the gates of the city of love, and admire the beauty 
of its shining towers, and hear the bells ringing out their 
joyful peals, till our souls shall long to be there. 

The subjective theory of morals, growing out 
quatettie- °f pantheism, and adopted by Goethe in his 
ture° cu writings and practice, is a half truth. That 
which is absolutely right in us, making our life 
so far forth one with the life of God, is a law unto itself. 
It should be allowed to act itself out freely. But even in 
its spontaneous action, it does not cease to be subject to 
authority. It recognizes the moral law as its counterpart, 
as the outward embodiment of its own ideal. This law, 
awful as Sinai and lovely as Tabor, is the externization 
of itself. Subject as it is to disturbances, to the stormy 
nights which so often issue from our lower nature, this 
higher nature in us is glad to sail by the light of the con- 
stellations ; those eternal stars of truth, hung out by the 
good God in our moral heavens, and ever reflected in the 
still depths of conscience, which hold us to our course 
through all the Euroclydons of life, while we watch for 
their unchanging signals. The true culture of man is 
therefore not single, as Goethe held, but a twofold process. 
It is daily a death and a resurrection from the dead. 
There is evil in us to be crucified, in order that what is 
best in us may live. Only as our man which is earthly 
dies, can our man which is heavenly be renewed. No one 



PANTHEISM. 225 

but Christ, who is our divine ideal, has ever taught us a 
doctrine of culture adequate to our case. It is as we bear 
about daily his dying, that his life also is manifest in our 
mortal body. That which is from beneath must decrease, 
while that which is from above takes increase. That is 
sown in weakness, while this is raised in power ; that is 
sown a natural body, while this is raised a spiritual body ; 
that is sown in dishonor, while this is raised in glory. 
Who has not many times sat upon the rocks at eventide, 
and watched the ships sailing away into the setting sun ? 
Before them all was bright, behind them their own dark 
shadows lay upon the water. Some of their sails were so 
set as to be pure and glistering in the light, others so 
turned away from it as to show a darkened surface ; yet 
all were alike helping to bear the ships onward. Such 
is the process, not single but twofold in aspect, by which 
man achieves his noblest culture. 

" There was a soul, one eve autumnal, sailing 

Beyond the earth's dark bars, 
Towards the land of sunsets never paling, 

Towards heaven's sea of stars. 
Behind there was a wake of billows tossing, 

Before a glory lay; 
happy soul ! with all sail set, just crossing 

Into the far away ; 
The gloom and gleam, the calmness and the strife, 
Were death before thee, and behind thee life. 

" And as that soul went onward, sweetly speeding 
Unto its home and light, 
Repentance made it sorrowful exceeding, 
Faith made it wondrous bright; 

15 



226 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Eepentance dark with shadowy recollections 

And longings unsufficed, 
Faith white and pure with sunniest affections 

Full from the face of Christ. 
But both across the sun-besilvered tide 
Helped to the haven where the heart would ride. 



LECTURE VL 

Pantheism in the Form of Hero-worship. 

The topic of this lecture suggests the name of Thomas 
Carlyle more naturally, perhaps, than that of 
any other man. Whether a pantheist or not, sentative 
it is sure that the tendency to deify and wor- 
ship great men has in him an earnest advocate, — its 
most conspicuous and eloquent champion in modern times. 
The subject could not be adequately treated apart from his 
writings ; and it is in this relation, and with this purpose, 
that he is here introduced. I do not propose to consider 
Carlyle, so much as a certain doctrine which he represents. 
As in the case of Goethe, it is not the man himself, but 
the speculative views embodied in his writings, with which 
I am primarily concerned. In this undertaking I shall 
make large use of the works of Carlyle, quoting them ver- 
batim as often as I conveniently can. 1 This certainly 
will be much fairer to him, and much more satis- 
factory, I hope, to those who would know his Method of 

J ' 1 7 treatment. 

views, than any account of him which I might 

give purely in my own words. Nor does it seem to me 

1 To save space and repetitions, detached passages, both in this lecture and 
others, have been sometimes brought together as one quotation, and single 
words here and there dropped or changed; but in no case has this liberty been 
taken where it would do violence to the author's meaning. 

227 



228 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

that I need to make any apology for this method of treat- 
ment ; since every author knows how much easier it is to 
write about a person than to present him faithfully in his 
own language, — especially if the work be candid and con- 
scientious, and so done as to preserve the progress and 
consecutiveness of the thought, at all of which I shall 
steadily aim. . 

The name of Thomas Carlyle holds a place 
Cariyie's second to but few in the English literature of 

position in 



Stefature ^e * ast g enerat i° n - Notwithstanding the cry of 
outlandishness raised against his style, whether 
by intelligent critics or stupid Philistinism, he yet has a 
thorough knowledge of the mother tongue; and, when he 
chooses to do so, he can write with a classic elegance and 
power of expression which our best authors might well 
covet. His disregard of accepted rules and standards is 
not due to ignorance, so much as to his moods of mind. 
He knows what he is doing, quite as well as any of his 
critics, when he casts contempt upon the great models in 
comj^osition ; and a close scrutiny of his most character- 
istic coinage of words and phrases often reveals an amaz- 
ing fitness and vitality in them. Though unconventional 
to the verge of lawlessness, his sentences show themselves 
the true servants of his ideas and feelings. Whatever vio- 
lence they may do to the laws of composition, it is clear 
that he utters them unaffectedly, eager only to be relieved 
of the host of thoughts in him which struggle for expres- 
sion. These idiosyncrasies of style are the more re- 
markable in view of his fondness for Goethe, whose 
writings are among the best models of the 
is s y e. literary art. It was in admiration of this Ger- 



PANTHEISM. 229 

man master, indeed, that Carlyle's career as a man of let- 
ters began. His education had been planned with a view 
to the clerical office in the Scotch church. But he recoiled 
from what seemed to him the narrowing duties of that 
office, when he had once drunk at the stream of free 
thought, then bursting forth so boldly on the continent. 
The draught intoxicated him. He felt that he had found 
the door to a new world ; a fresh and living world, where 
intellectual freedom w*as the only law, not that stale and 
conventional world to which he had been used. He re- 
solved to explore this foreign literature, beside which the 
standard literature at home seemed to him so dead. And 
he threw himself into the undertaking with great spirit ; 
too full of enthusiasm to consider whether it was all truth 
which he followed, or perhaps judging that that could not 
be false which so exhilarated and emboldened him. 

Such were the impulse and first joyous experience, which 
led Carlyle, yet a young man, to yield himself up to the 
influence of Goethe. The decisive step was taken. His 
mind came into communication with the pantheism of the 
day, and, in all its future workings, embodied more or 
less of the spirit of that error. Not that he lost his indi- 
viduality. His genius was too original and persistent for 
that. He is always himself, though freely appropriating 
other men's thoughts, and though his style was greatly 
affected by his German studies. His philosophizing, if 
such it may be called, reminds us of the crystals We some- 
times see in nature, — cast in the mould which their inhe- 
rent laws make for them, but stained or clouded by the 
infusion of foreign matter. If the genius of Goethe was 
mainly aesthetic, that of Carlyle inclined to be ethical. 



230 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

One is as true to the Scotch bias as the other to the 
German. By instinct Carlyle was a moralist; 
dency? en and therefore, to whatever matter he applied 
himself, instead of treating it simply as an artist, 
he handled it in the spirit of a critic and reformer. If 
Goethe held that it was the whole function of literature to 
paint life, Carlyle even more stoutly held that literature 
should concern itself with the relations of life, and their 
adjustment between man and man. It was with this 
reformatory bent of mind that he set out in his literary 
career. And we are now to see whither it carried him 
after he had broken loose from his early moorings ; when 
he no more turned to the Father of his spirit for guidance 
into all truth, but committed himself to the stream of his 
own reasonings and intuitions. 

Though fundamentally at one with Goethe, and making 
Goethe's works his main study for years, he yet chose an 
entirely different sphere in which to labor. The German 
was devoted to poetry, science, and fiction, and to society ; 
the Scotchman gave himself mainly to politics, — the term 
" politics " being used in its highest and broadest sense, in- 
clusive of all that enters into questions of statesmanship 
and government. Nor has this political reformer, so far 
as appears, fallen into those more vicious habits which 
Goethe contracted while yielding to the aesthetic bent of 
his genius. That Carlyle regarded political reform as the 
field in which his life-work was cast, is clear from 
a political the very titles of his chief works : the French 

reformer. J 

Revolution, Past, Present, and Chartism, Crom- 
well, Frederick the Great, and New Essays in which he 
discusses Model Prisons, Downing Street, the Stump-Ora- 



PANTHEISM. 231 

tor, Parliaments, and kindred subjects. The Heroes and 
Hero-worship, though a course of lectures ostensibly lit- 
erary, yet betrays the fact all along, that he subordinated 
literature to questions of government. The only works in 
which this aim does not stand prominent are Sartor Re- 
sartus, and some of his earlier essays, written before he 
had fairly settled himself to his more especial purpose. 
His Life of John Sterling may also be an exception ; but 
this was written not of choice so much as from a regard 
for the wishes of his lost friend. His criticisms of the 
American war under Lincoln, and of the measures for 
national reconstruction which followed it; his interest in 
General Eyre while trampling on the rights of England's 
West India subjects; and his utterances respecting the 
extension of the franchise among his own countrymen, 
show, however much to his discredit, that his ruling pas- 
sion is political. As the opinions and sympathies of an 
old man, they also confirm the proverb, that the ruling 
passion is strong in death. 

Let us go back a little now, and look at the foundation 
on which Carlyle built up the temple of his thought. I 
have not found in his writings any explicit avowal of pan- 
theism as the philosophical and religious basis of his spec- 
ulations. He has, indeed, so late as the year 1870, de- 
nied the charge of pantheism, so often brought 
against him. Yet his way of doing it shows Stiieist? 
that he cares little about the matter, in any 
case ; nor does he even define what he means by pan- 
theism ? Very likely he could in truth repel many of the 
charges of his critics ; yet he leaves the question so inde- 



232 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

terminate, and his opponents are so numerous and per- 
sistent, that the case must be settled by a careful study of 
his writings, rather than by any single denials or avowals. 
Categorical answers are not to be trusted, where the ques- 
tioner and the person questioned have different notions of 
the subject-matter between them. The intelligent stu- 
dent knows pantheism by its looks, wherever found, and 
whether falsely named or nameless : it need not be labelled 
for his information, any more than a plant in order to be 
known by the botanist. Carlyle was totally indifferent to 
names, which he looked on as only the changing " clothes," 
and no part of the permanent essence of philosophy. 
That he was perfectly content to be known as a pantheist 
is clear from the fact that he has never seriously, but only 
now and then satirically resented the charge. It is a point 
which he always managed to evade when urged by his 
friends, favoring them with replies too flippant, or too 
scornfully brief, to be at all satisfactory. It should be 
said, however, that his ambiguity here, as in many other 
places, may have been due to a certain grim humor, which 
he loved to indulge on all occasions. He rather enjoyed 
the impression of his friends that he was a sort of reckless 
and impious Titan, — holding theories utterly subversive 
of the present order of society, though angrily refusing to 
tell just what they were. But pure philosophy was not 
his province. It does not appear that he had any imme- 
diate knowledge of Spinozism, or of the leading 

Not in the -i • , .-itt • r> o • 

dogmatic thinkers who revived the doctrines of Spinoza 

sense. . . * 

in Germany. He imbibed the essence of that 
philosophy rather, as it was filtered through the works of 
a more popular class of authors. He drank it in espe- 



PANTHEISM. 233 

cially from the works of Goethe; nor was its influence 
upon him weakened, but rather strengthened, by his famil- 
iarity with the writings of Heyne, Werner, Richter, Nova- 
lis, Lessing. He is not a champion of pantheism, nor even 
a teacher of it, except incidentally. His distinctive work 
is in the field of political reform. Yet everywhere we 
may detect, and that quite easily, the pantheistic infil- 
tration. 

Take, for instance, the following view of the history of 
the human race in Sartor Resarttts : " Generation after 
generation takes to itself the form of a body; 

. ~. . Proofs of a 

and forth-issuing from Cimmerian night, on pantheistic 

& ° spirit. 

heaven's mission, appears. What force and 
fire are in each he expends : one grinding in the mill of 
industry ; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine 
heights of science ; one madly dashed in pieces on the 
rocks of strife, in war with his fellow: — and then the 
heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly vesture falls away, and 
soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. Thus, 
like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of heaven's 
artillery does this mysterious mankind thunder and flame, 
in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the 
unknown deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
spirit-host, we emerge from the inane ; haste stormfully 
across the astonished earth ; then plunge again into the 
inane. But whence ? O Heaven, whither ? Sense knows 
not; faith knows not; only that it is through 
mystery to mystery, from God and to God." 1 H isto?yf° f 
Now, this is a most vivid description of the col- 
lective life of man, it must be owned, whether correct or 

i Sartor Resartus (Harpers, New York, 1858), pp. 208, 209. 



234 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

not ; though it has too many double words, and shows 
more passion than is desirable. But the spirit and tone 
of it cannot be mistaken. It is thoroughly morbid, and 
manifestly pantheistic in its morbidness. Nothing in 
Werther could teach more clearly that our true wisdom is 
in committing suicide. We may admit, as Carlyle, no 
doubt, thought while writing the passage, that it is 
"grand;" but we are constrained to add that it is 
" gloomy and peculiar." One would not like a friend, in 
a melancholy state of mind, to read much of that sort of , 
sentimentalizing. It makes us " such stuff as dreams are 
made of," in a sense not intended by Shakespeare. Its 
God, the beginning and end of the whole " apj>earance," is 
not a living Father, whose hand we may grasp in sweet 
hope when we step off the stage, but simply the " inane," — 
the pantheist's blank and dark immensity. That human 
history, considered as a single movement, is divine so far 
as it has any reality, seems to be assumed in the follow- 
ing : " The life-tree Igdrasil, wide-waving, many-toned, has 
its roots down deep in the death-kingdoms, amongst the 
oldest dead dust of men, and with its boughs reaches 
always beyond the stars ; and in all times and places it is 
one and the same life-tree." x There is but one life, that 
is, by which all the parts of the universal frame are for- 
ever tilled. 

But Carlyle finds this one absolute essence in the indi- 
vidual man, as really as in the race. " The highest God 
dwells visibly in that mystic, unfathomable visi- 
onal! indi ~ bility which calls itself I on the earth. 'Bend- 
ing before men,' says Xovalis, 'is a reverence 

i Past, Present, and Chartism (Harpers, 1858), p. 36. 



PANTHEISM. 235 

clone to this revelation in the flesh. We touch Heaven 
Avhen we lay our hand on a human body.' " x Speaking of 
the man of letters, Carlyle says, " Plis life is a piece of the 
everlasting heart of nature herself: all men's life is, — but 
the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, 
in most times ; the strong few are strong, heroic, peren- 
nial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The un- 
speakable divine significance, full of wonder and terror, 
that lies in the being of every man, of every thing, is the 
presence of God who makes every man and thing." 2 "I 
find it written within, and not without, the order of na- 
ture ; and that all things, like all men, are blood-relations 
to one another." 3 " In this point of view I consider that, 
for the last hundred years, by far the notablest of all lit- 
erary men is Goethe. To that man there was given what 
we may call a life in the divine idea of the world ; vision 
of the inward divine mystery ; and strangely, out of his 
books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the 
workmanship and temple of God." 4 

In his views of nature, too, of which he thus makes 
every man a j^art, Carlyle shows the same pantheistic 
habit of thought. "All nature and life are but one gar- 
ment, a living garment, woven and ever a-weaving in the 
loom of time." 5 " Then sawest thou that this fair Uni- 
verse, were it in the meanest province thereof, 

Views of 

is in very deed the star-domed city of God; nature pan- 

J J 7 theistic. 

that through every star, through every grass- 

i Past, Present, and Chartism (Harpers, 1858), p. 123. 

2 Hero-worship (John Wiley, New York, 1859), pp. 139, 140. 

s New Essays (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston, 1855), p. 416. 

* Hero-worship, p. 141. 

5 Sartor Resartus (Harpers, New York, 1858), p. 158. 



236 half truths a;nt> the truth. 

blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a 
present God still beams. But nature, which is the time- 
vesture of God, and reveals him to the wise, hides him 
from the foolish." * " Beautiful, nay solemn was the sud- 
den aspect to the wanderer. He gazed over those stupen- 
dous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire ; and 
never till this hour had he known nature, that she was one, 
that she was his mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow 
was fading into clearness in the sky, and the sun had now 
departed, a murmur of eternity and immensity, of death and 
life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as if death and life 
w T ere one, as if the earth were not dead, as if the spirit of 
the earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit 
were therewith holding communion." 2 " The world of 
nature for every man is the fantasy of himself; this world 
is the multiplex ' image of his own dream.' " 3 " There is 
one God, in and over all. He is the reality. "We and all 
things are but the shadow of him ; a transitory garment 
veiling the eternal splendor." 4 " This so solid-looking 
material world is at bottom in very deed nothing ; is a 
visible and tactual manifestation of God's power and pres- 
ence, a shadow hung out by him on the bosom of the void 
infinite ; nothing more." 5 " What is the mystery of the 
universe — Goethe's ' open secret,' seen almost by none ? , 
that divine mystery which lies everywhere in all beings, 
from the starry sky to the grass of the field, which is but the 
vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible? This 
divine mystery is, in all times and places.; veritably is. 
In most times and places it is greatly overlooked, and the 

1 Sartor Resartus, p„ 207. 2 ibid., p. 120. 

3 Hero-worship, p. 23. * Ibid., p. 50. b ibid., p. G2. 



PANTHEISM. 237 

universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as 
the realized thought of God, is considered trivial, inert, 
commonplace matter, — as if, says the satirist, it were a 
dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together." l 
" Creation lies before us like a glorious rainbow ; but the 
sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in 
that strange dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they 
were substances ; and sleep deepest while fancying our- 
selves most awake. Which of your philosophical systems 
is other than a dream theorem ; a net quotient confidently 
given out, whose divisor and dividend are both unknown? 
What are all your national wars, with their Moscow- 
retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled revolutions, but the 
somnambulism of uneasy sleepers ? This dreaming, this 
somnambulism is what we on earth call life ; wherein the 
most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right 
hand from left ; yet they only are wise who know that 
they know nothing." 2 

If Carlyle means what these latter sentences plainly 
imply, then why, in the name of that wisdom which he so 
strangely defines, has he spent all his life trying to tell 
kingdoms, and republics, and society in general, how much 
he knows about their true nature and the best ways of 
perpetuating them ? Some of his voluminous advice is of 
so absurd a nature as to go no little way towards estab- 
lishing his theory of universal nescience, though it certainly 
excludes him from his own category of the " wise," who, 
knowing that they know nothing, are precluded from any 
attempt to teach. I will give but one other quotation 
under this head, showing that Carlyle, in full sympathy 

1 Hero-worship, p. 72. 2 Sartor Kesartus, p. 41. 



238 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

with pantheism, looked on all things as making up a single 
and living whole. "Detached, separated! I say there is 
no such separation : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, 
cast aside ; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works 
together witli all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, 
shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual meta- 
morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost ; there 
are forces in and around it, though working in inverse 
order, else how could it rot ? Despise not the rag from 
which man makes paper, or the litter from which the earth 
makes corn. Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insig- 
nificant ; all objects are as windows, through which the. 
philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself." * 

The fatalism of the pantheist, as well as his unreality 
of history, of the individual, and of nature, appears in 

Carlyle. He speaks of "the ring of necessity 
SnecesSt"! whereby we all are begirt;" and adds, "happy 

he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens it 
into a ring of duty, and plays round it with beautiful pris- 
matic diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourn for all 
our being, it is there." 2 Carlyle shows a pantheistic habit, 
too, in his treatment of the subjects of space and time. 
He does not regard them as objective realities in his meta- 
physics, but as purely subjective notions, which the mind 
imagines in certain processes of thinking. " Think well," 

says he, "thou too wilt find that space is but a 
andTime. mode of our human sense, so likewise time ; 

there is no space and no time : we are we know 
not what, — light-sparkles floating in the asther of Deity." 3 
" Is the past annihilated, then, or only past ? is the future 

1 Sartor Resartus, p. 56. 2 Ibid., p. 78. 3 ibid., p. 42. 



PANTHEISM. 239 

non-extant, or only future ? Those mystic faculties of 
thine, memory and hope, may answer : already, through 
those mystic avenues, thou the earth-blinded summonest 
both past and future, and communest with them, though 
as yet darkly, and w T ith mute beckonings. The curtains 
of yesterday drop down, the curtains of to-morrow 
roll up ; but yesterday and to-morrow both are. Pierce 
through the time element, glance into the eternal. Believe 
what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of man's soul, 
even as all thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it 
there : that time and space are not God, but creations of 
God ; that with God as it is a universal Here, so it is an 
everlasting Now." 1 He even presses the language of the 
Scriptures into his service, in stating this doctrine. " Well 
sung the Hebrew Psalmist : ' If I take the wings of the 
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, there 
thou art with me.' Thou, too, O cultivated reader, who 
probably art no Psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing God only 
by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where 
force is not?" 2 And so, not only do the Scriptures 
agree with Carlyle, but the God of the Old Testament is 
no living Father of men — only an almighty and omni- 
present force. 

But let us follow Carlyle a little into the proper 
domain of religion. Here he applies the panthe- vilw?. 0118 
istic solvent to all forms of faith, recognizing 
no supernatural inspiration, but finding one and the same 
divinity, whether in Paganism, Christianity, or Mohamme- 
danism. He puts the Bible in the same category with the 
Koran, quoting with approbation the saying of Novalis, 

1 Sartor Eesartus, p. 205. 2 ibid., p. 55. 



240 HALF TEUTHS ANJ> THE TBUTH. 

that " the highest problem of literature is the writing of a 
Bible." 1 " To each nation its believed history is its Bible : 
not in Judea alone, or Hellas and Latium, but in all lands 
and all times." 2 " All history is an inarticulate Bible ; 
and, in a dim and inarticulate manner, reveals 

Bibles. 

the divine appearances in this lower world." 3 
" Is there no ' inspiration, 5 then, but an ancient Jewish, 
Greekish, Roman one ? Quench not, I advise thee, the 
monitions of that thrice-sacred gospel, holier than all Gos- 
pels, which dwells in each man." 4 " Moses and the Jews 
did not make God's laws ; no, indeed ; they did not even 
read them in a way that has been, final or satisfactory to 
me. In several respects I find said reading decidedly bad, 
and will not, in any wise, think of adopting it." 5 This is 
quite dogmatic, it must be confessed, for the man who only 
knows that he knows nothing ; and it is probable that, on 
the whole, the Christian world will persist in preferring 
Moses to Carlyle. Still further defining his ideas of re- 
ligion, our author says, " The first man who, looking with 
open soul on this august heaven and earth, this beautiful 

and awful, which we name nature, universe, and 
woShip. such like, the essence of which remains forever 

unnamable ; he who first, gazing on this, fell 
on his knees awe-struck, in silence as likeliest, — he, driven 
by inner necessity, had done a thing which all thoughtful 
hearts saw straightway to be an expressive and altogether 
adoptable thing." 6 Here, then, we have all religion de- 
fined as essentially nature-worship ; and it is rendered, not 

i New Essays, p. 35S. 2 Ibid., p. 410. 

3 Ibid., p. 412. * Ibid., p. 386. 5 ibid., p. 419. 

6 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 129. 



PANTHEISM. 241 

of choice, but spontaneously and of necessity. To the 
same effect Carlyle says, " The essence of the Scandi- 
navian, as indeed of all pagan mythologies, we found to 
be recognition of the divineness of nature ; sincere com- 
munion of man with the mysterious invisible powers 
visibly seen at work in the world around him." 1 Again 
he says that condemnable idolatry is insincere idolatry. Be- 
cause we all admire sincerity, and abhor hypocrisy, he 
seems to think that he carries his point in saying, " Ma- 
homet's creed we call a kind of Christianity; 

•it Sincerity 

and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnest- the only 

essential. 

ness with which it was believed and laid to 
heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miser- 
able Syrian sects, with their vain janglings about Homo- 
ousion and Homoiousion, the head full of worthless noise, 
the heart empty and dead." 2 But does our author mean 
to say that those " Syrian sects " are not one thing, and Chris- 
tianity quite another ? We grant him the right to define 
all religion as at bottom a pantheistic sentiment, if he 
chooses to do so ; but why should one who prides himself 
on his love of truth, and who has so much intellectual 
modesty withal, resort to the stale trick of confounding 
Christian truth with the men who hold its forms while 
denying its power ? That he believes in the divinity of 
all religions alike, is plain from the following : " Are not 
all true men soldiers of the same army ? All fashions of 
anna, the Arab turban and swift scimeter, Thor's strong 
hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther's 
battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are 
with us, not against us. We are all under one captain, 

1 Hero-worship, p. 27. 2 Ibid., p. 56. 

16 



242 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

soldiers of the same host." l In his famous Inaugural 
Address, spoken before a university audience, using words 
often quoted since, Carlyle defines religion as " reverence 
"for what is below us." This definition, so thoroughly 
pantheistic, is not original with him, however, 
Accepts } m i } g taken entire from Goethe. Here are 

Goethe's 

re5 "ion. n ° f Goethe's words ; and no words could more 
clearly show the position of both master and 
pupil, as also their theory that Christianity even, so far as 
true, is but a form of pantheism : " But now we have to 
speak of the third religion, grounded on reverence for what 
is under us. This we name the Christian, as in the Chris-, 
tian religion such a temper is most distinctly manifested : 
it is a last step to which mankind were destined and fitted 
to attain. But what a task was it not only to be patient 
with the earth, and let it lie beneath us, we appealing to a 
higher birthplace ; but also to recognize humility and 
poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, 
suffering and death, as divine ; nay, even to look on sin 
and crime as not hinderances, but to honor and love them 
as furtherances of what is holy." 2 Here we are let into the 
innermost secret of Goethe's glorification of vice and crime ; 
into the innermost secret of Carlyle's eulogies of American 
Slavery, the Southern Rebellion, and the oppressive meas- 
ures of General Eyre. Carlyle honors and loves these 
embodiments of wickedness. They are manifestations of 
the divine essence of all things ; feeble manifestations, so 
that he has the keenest religious faculties who is able to 
recognize them as truly divine. The amount of religion 

i Hero-worship, p. 108. 

8 Essays (Phillips, Sampson, & Co., Boston, 1858), p. 87. 



PANTHEISM. 243 

• 

in a man, that is, is greater as the object of his worship is 
less manifestly, worthy. To call evil good, and darkness 
light, and adore them as such, is the sublimest act of man's 
religious nature. We do not touch the high- 
water mark of our manhood, till we believe in 
the divinity of crime, and are able to say unto sin itself, 
" Thou art my God." 

Turning now from these quotations, which seem to me 
to make clear the pantheistic spirit of Carlyle, 
let us see how that spirit flows up, and out, into pantheism 

,-, , . . . ,...,. -ip affects his 

all his writings on political history and reform, practical 
giving them their r.ttitude, their shape, their tone. 

It is in assailing the corrupt governments of Europe, 
and lampooning their stupid conventionalisms, that Carlyle 
shows what real strength is in him. Herein, as 

. , ~, . , , n , . Makes him 

with Goethe, lay the secret of his power over revolution- 
ary, 
the masses of the people. He seemed to them 

to be their champion while, with eloquent and merciless 
sarcasm, he lashed and laughed to scorn their oppressive 
rulers. We wonder that a writer who finds divineness in 
everything, and who worships what is below him, should 
so denounce the European monarchies ; but he is not the 
first instance of a pantheist crossing his own track in the 
heat of controversy. He forgets his theory in eagerness 
to assail " the powers that be ; " like that Universalist in 
the loyal army, who believed in Hell as a military neces- 
sity, w T hile any rebels were abroad. Yet Carlyle would 
probably say that he is philosophically consistent ; for he 
does not regard what he assails as any real thing. In- 
anities, shams, unrealities, simulacra, are the names he 
loves most to apply to the objects of his scorn. 



244 



HALF TRUTH'S AND THE TRUTH. 



Take, for example, his work on the French Revolution, 

which I think the ablest and humanest of all his 

oiuSon. " works. It was written in the freshness of his 

years, before the pantheistic spirit had soured 

. into misanthropy. His pity for the royal family, for the 

heirs of great estates, and especially for the beautiful and 

pious Marie Antoinette, is genuine and touching. His 

whole soul seems to mourn on account of the woes about 

to overwhelm the French government. Yet those woes 

must come; for the Bourbon dynasty, notwithstanding 

the merits of individual supporters, has- become a sham, 

a cheat, an unreality. It is no longer a revela- 

"Won Icno^s 

the fault of tion of God. That divinity which is the essence 

France. 

of all things has gone out of it; therefore it 
is untrue, without use or meaning, and cannot but 
pass away — if not quietly, then with much smoke and 
noise. "Before those five-and-twenty laboring millions 
could get that haggardness of face, in a nation calling 
itself Christian, and calling man the brother of man, what 
unspeakable, nigh infinite dishonesty (of seeming, not 
being) in all manner of rulers, and appointed watchers, 
temporal and spiritual, must there not, through long ages, 
have gone on accumulating! It will accumulate: more- 
over it will reach a head ; for the first of all gospels is this, 
that a lie cannot endure forever." 1 In this strain it is that 
he speaks of all governments which have become feeble, 
and which the oppressed masses dare defy. They are not, 
but only seem to be ; are not powers any longer, but 
merely the simulacra of departed strength. He contrasts 

i French Revolution (Harpers, 1861), Vol. I., p. 35. 



PANTHEISM. 245 

these enfeebled governments, which rest on the blind loy- 
alty of the people, with those of a pagan age, sighing for a 
return of the times in which Thor and Odin were wor- 
shipped. " What a world was that old sunk one," he says, 
" real governors governing it ; shams not yet recognized 
as tolerable in it." 1 And he adds, "A truer time will 
come for the nations ; authorities based on truth, and on 
the silent or spoken worship of human nobleness, will 
again get themselves established." 2 " This is a reflection 
sa<l but important to the governments now fallen anarchic, 

that they had not spiritual talent enough. They 

J l m . . Laws and 

Avere not wise enough ; the virtue, heroism, in- compacts 

^ ' ' ' not the 

tellect, or bv whatever other synonvmes we des- basis of a 

J " true gov- 

ignate it, was not adequate." 3 The trouble with eriiment - 
these governments, according to Carlyle, is that they are 
based on law and compacts, not on the inherent and 
acknowledge ability of the men administering them. And 
it will be noticed that by " ability " he means sheer 
strength to govern, of whatever sort. He sees only " syn- 
onymes," where the Christian moralist is wont to make dis- 
tinctions. Anything is right which is able. "It grows 
late in. the day," he says, " with constitutionalism ; and it 
is time for rulers to' look up from their Delolme. If the 
constitutional man will take the old Delolme-Bentham 
spectacles off his nose, and look abroad into the fact itself 
with such eyes as he may have, I consider he will find that 
reform in matters social does not now mean, as he has 
long sleepily fancied, reform in Parliament alone, or 
chiefly, or perhaps at all. My alarming message* to 

i New Essays, p. 358. * Ibid,, p. 183. 3 ibid., p. 162. 



246 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

him is, that the thing we vitally need is not a more and 
more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a 
ruling sovereign to preside over Parliament." l Carlyle 
would not do away altogether with constitutional bodies, 
as they at present exist. They have ceased to have any 
power to govern. Yet the state of popular feeling gets 
itself spoken through them ; and thus the strong ruler, 
whom the people fear, is able to adapt his measures to the 
times. "Of representative assemblies may not this be 
said? that contending parties do thereby ascertain one 
another's strength. They fight there, since fight they 
must, by petition, Parliamentary eloquence, not by sword, 
bayonet and bursts of military cannon. Why do men 
fight at all, if it be not that they are yet unac- 
Function of quainted with one another's strength, and must 

representa- 

the assem- fight and ascertain it ? Knowing that thou art 

blies. & to 

stronger, that thou canst compel me, I will sub- 
mit to thee : unless I chance to prefer extermination, and 
slightly circuitous suicide, there is no other course for me. 
That in England, by public meetings, petitions, elections, 
leading articles, and the jangling hubbub of tongue-fence 
which perpetual!}? - goes on everywhere in that country, 
people ascertain one another's strength; and the most 
obstinate House of Lords has to give in before it come to 
cannonading and guijlotinement : this is a saving charac- 
teristic of England." 2 Once more, speaking of representa- 
tive government in Europe, he says, to the same effect, 
" Beyond doubt it will be useful and indispensable, for the 
king or governor to know what the mass of men think on 
questions legislative and administrative; what they will 

1 New Essays, p. 297. 2 p as t ; Present, and Chartism, p, 304. 



PANTHEISM. 247 

assent to willingly, what unwillingly ; what they will re- 
sist with superficial discontents, what with obstinate 
determination, with riot, perhaps with armed rebellion. 
No governor can otherwise go along with clear illumina- 
tion of his path, however plain the load-star and ulterior 
goal to him ; but at every step must be liable to fall into 
the ditch ; to awaken he knows not what sleeping nests 
of hornets, what sleeping dog-kennels better to be avoided. 
By all manner of means let the governor inform himself of 
all this. To which end Parliaments, free presses, and 
such like, are excellent; they keep the governor aware of 
what the people, wisely or foolishly, think." 1 An Ameri- 
can senator in the year 1861, representing a state which 
had just seceded from the Union, and defending the right 
of his state thus to do regardless of any authority of the 
Congress, rose amid his fellow-senators, and said, " This 
assembly is not an authoritative body to me, but only 
a very respectable public meeting." Precisely like that 
rebellious senator's view, seems to be Carlyle's theory of 
assemblies of men, met together by election of the people, 
and under a written constitution, to make laws for the 
regulation and government of their country. 

We have now seen the secret of Carlyle's favor with 
the struggling masses in Europe. As against 
the constituted authorities there, he seems to mocra<?y as 
lead them in their arduous struggle. But he is ™nstitu- 
mocking them. If he "keeps the word of a 1 r chy. m ° D 
promise to their ear," he "breaks it to their 
hopo," This fact has shown itself even in his tirades 
against constitutional monarchy ; but it needs to be more 

1 New Essays, p. 306. 



248 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

distinctly noticed. The inference was that one who so 
lashed existing monarchies must be a lover of democ- 
racies. Vain inference! When he glorifies rebellion, in 
the case of the French led by Mirabeau, of the English 
led by Cromwell, and of the Americans led by Samuel 
Adams, it is not because he believes in the liberty they 
are seeking, but because he can use them for the time 
being against the more immediate object of his attack. 
These rebellions, though having but little divinity in 
themselves, show that the divinity is all gone out of the 
governments assailed. What could be nobler than his 
eulogy of the first settlers of Massachusetts ? " Hail to 
thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven; poor, 

common-looking ship, hired by common char- 
thei5wims. ter party for coined dollars ; calked with mean 

oakum and tar; provisioned with vulgarest bis- 
cuit and bacon ; — yet what ship Argo, or miraculous epic 
ship built by the sea-gods, was other than a foolish bum- 
barge in comparison ! Golden fleeces or the like these 
sailed for, with or without effect ; thou, little Mayflower, 
hadst in thee a veritable Promethean spark ; the life-spark 
of the largest nation on earth. They went seeking leave 
to hear sermon in their own method, these Mayflower 
Puritans ; a most indispensable search ; and yet, like Saul 
the son of Kish, seeking a small thing they found this 
unexpected great thing! Honor to the brave and true; 
Puritanism tne y ver ily 5 we say, carry fire from heaven, and 
efani^mpu?" a power which themselves dream not of. Let 
oge ier. a ^ men honor Puritanism, since God so hon- 
ored it. Islam, with its heart-felt 'Allah Akbar,' was 
it not honored? There is but one thing without 



PANTHEISM. 249 

honor; smitten with eternal barrenness and inability to do 
or be; insincerity, unbelief. He who believes no thing, 
who believes only the shows of things, is not in relation 
with nature and fact at all. Nature denies him; orders 
him at his earliest convenience to disappear. Let him 
disappear from her domains, into those of Chaos, Hypoth- 
esis and Simulacrum, or wherever else his parish may 
be." 1 Thus we see that the Pilgrims, though honored, 
are esteemed no more worthy of honor than the 
first followers of Mahomet. Ability and fear- feeglvovl 
lessness, in whatever form shown, are the real the^case. 1 
source of merit; and they are admired just as 
much in despots as in bodies of men struggling to be 
free ; examples of the latter being extolled only in dam- 
aging contrast with the established governments of Eu- 
rope. In no case is any love shown for governments by 
the people. When the nation which he recognizes as 
"the largest on earth," whose seed was wafted in the 
Mayflower, is in trouble, and asks the countenance of 
good men throughout the world, while asserting its right 
to exist, instead of the smallest word of sympathy from 
Carlyle, it is insulted with outpourings of contempt and 
scorn. Its purpose to let the oppressed go free is rid- 
iculed under the title of sympathy for " Quashee ; " its at- 
tempt to carry out its own democratic ideas is called " a 
shooting of Niagara ; " the terrible war which it endures, 
rather than let the world's last hope of liberty perish, is 
contemptuously pictured as " the foul chimney burning 
itself clean." No language could be more scornful than 
that which Carlyle hurls at the masses of the people, and 

i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 363. 



250 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

on popular governments of every kind. The law of ve- 
racity, the silences, the eternities, or whatever other name 
he chooses to give his nature-god, is not in them; and 
therefore, says he, " let them take themselves out of the 
way." 

Carlyle ridicules the efforts of the humane to reform 
the vicious and criminal classes, thus showing, in its bald- 
est form, his thorough hatred of everything 
moral re- which is too weak to guide and take care of 
itself. He thinks that every moral and social 
reform, looking to the recovery of outcasts, should be 
named a " Universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection 
Society." Those outcasts he calls "the elixir of the infat- 
uated among mortals." If we want the worst possible 
investment of our benevolence, in laboring to save the 
poor and vicious classes, we " accurately have it." " No- 
where so as here," says he to us, " can you be certain that 
a given quantity of wise teaching bestowed, of benevo- 
lent trouble taken, will yield zero, or the minimum of 
return. It is sowing of your wheat upon Irish quagmires ; 
laboriously harrowing it in upon the sand of the sea- 
shore." 1 " Not brotherhood ; in enmity that must last 
through eternity, in unappeasable aversion, shall I have to 
live with these! Brotherhood? No, be the 

Misanthro- th(mght far from me> T hey are A(LWs chi >. 

dren, — alas yes, I well remember that, and 
never shall forget ; hence this rage and sorrow." 2 " If I 
had a commonwealth to govern," says Carlyle, — as, 
Heaven be thanked, he has not, — "certainly it should not 
be these Devil's regiments of the line that I would first 

1 New Essays, p. 77. 2 Ibid., p. 84. 



PANTHEISM. 251 

of all concentrate my attention* on. With them I should 
be apt to make rather brief work ; to them one would 
apply the besom, try to sweep them with some rapidity 
into the dust-bin, and well out of one's road, I should 
rather say. Fill your threshing-floor with docks, rag- 
weeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them, — that is 
not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. Away, you ; 
begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line." 1 

With such contempt for all efforts to save the aban- 
doned classes, denying them, as he does, the very elements 
of humanity, declaring that they are not in any degree 
susceptible of improvement, Carlyle need hardly 

ii Origin of 

take the trouble to assure us that he has no his eon- 
tempt for 
faith in popular governments. His political dcmocra- 

views are a legitimate deduction from his low 

estimate of human nature. Yet he is at pains to state his 

political views; and if we do not understand them, it 

certainly cannot be because his language is not explicit 

and strong enough. He sees the oppressed people of 

Europe looking hopefully to tjie example of America, and 

lie says, " Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, 

Democracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible. So 

much, with certainty of loud, astonished contradiction 

from all manner of men at present, but with sure appeal 

to the law of nature and the ever- abiding fact, may be 

suggested and asserted once more. The universe itself is 

a monarchy and hierarchy; large liberty of voting there, 

all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but with conditions 

inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every exercise 

of the same." 2 Mankind are a worthless set, that is, taken 

1 New Essays, p. 74. 2 ibid., p. 27. 



252 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

in the mass ; bvit here and there may be found a single 
man, worthy to be trusted with such absolute power 
over his fellows as God exercises on a universal scale! 
" Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-cancelling 
business : and gives in the long run a net result of zero. 
Where no government is wanted, save that of the parish- 
constable, as in America with its boundless soil, every 
man being able to find work and recompense for himself, 
democracy may subsist ; not elsewhere, except briefly, as 
a swift transition towards something other and further. 
Democracy never yet, that we heard of, was able to ac- 
complish much work, beyond that same cancelling of 
itself." l 

But we will not keep to this negative side of Carlyle's 
creed any longer. We have seen what power, 

Negative side 

of his pout- and what weakness, it lends him before his 

ical creed. 

world-wide audience. Stating his intense dis- 
belief in hereditary monarchies and aristocracies, which 
are based on written constitutions, the .oppressed masses 
applaud him; and on the other hand those same de- 
nounced governments applaud, as he in turn utters his 
detestation of all popular governments. Republicanism is 
not better to him than absolutism, but worse, where pre- 
scribed forms of law determine the course of affairs. His 
hatred of constitutional free government is as bitter and 
fixed as his hatred of constitutional monarchy. He puts 
them alike into the category of things which are contrary 
to nature; which are therefore unreal, and without any 
essence of divinity in them. He denounces them impar- 
tially, with such power of expression as he can bring from 

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 344. 



PANTHEISAT. 253 

his ample vocabulary; and then turning from them, as 
worse than worthless things, he shows his " more excellent 
way." What that way is, we will now proceed to see. 

The panacea which Carlyle proposes for all social or 
governmental evils is Hero-worship. The Millennium 
will come to the world, and to governments of 

pit R is politi- 

whatever name, when the masses ol the people cai and so- 
cial creed 
everywhere bow down, in unquestioning rever- positively 

ence, before a few whom they recognize as great Hero-wor- 
men. Their personal will, unshackled by writ- 
ten constitutions, should give laws to the masses about 
them; for in them, more than all things else, does the 
divine soul of nature, which is incapable of error, make 
itself manifest. " Able men to govern us; that would be 
the way, nor is there any other remedy for whatsoever 
goes wrong. There is but one man fraught with blessings 
to this world, fated to diminish and successively abolish 
the curses of the world. For him make search, him rever- 
ence and follow ; know that to find him or miss him 
means victory or defeat for you in all establishments and 
enterprises here below." 1 " He is above thee, like a god. 
Thou, in thy stupendous three-inch pattens, art under him. 
He is thy born king, thy conqueror and supreme lawgiver ; 
not all the guineas and cannons, and leather and prunella, 
under the sky can save thee from him." 2 That in men 
which we call genius, is, according to Carlyle, only the 
more intensely revealed power of the absolute all-in-all. 
Jesus of Nazareth had simply the largest amount of reli- 
gious genius ever enjoyed by a single person ; and it is that 

* New Essays, p. 137. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 291. 



254 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

which has made him " a god to this hour." * " I should 
say, if we do not reckon a great man literally divine, it is 
that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable 
fountain of splendor, wisdom and heroism, are ever rising 
higher; not altogether that our reverence for these quali- 
ties, as manifested in our like, is getting lower." 2 " The 
great man is a force of nature; whatever is truly great in 
him springs up from the inarticulate depths." 3 " To do 
every one of us what lies in him, that the able man every- 
where may be put into the place that is fit for him, which 
is his by actual right: is not this the sum of all social mo- 
rality for every citizen of the world ? " 4 " Worship, what 
we call human religion, has undergone various phases in 
the history of mankind. To the primitive man all forces 
of nature were divine; either for propitiation or for admi- 
ration, many things, and in a sense all things, demanded 
worship from him. But especially the noble human soul 
was divine to him ; and announced with direct impressive- 
ness, as it ever does, the inspiration of the Highest; de- 
manding worship from the primitive man. Whereby, as 
has been explained elsewhere, this latter form of worship, 
Hero-worship as we call it, did, among the ancient peo- 
ples, attract and subdue to itself all other forms of human 
worship; irradiating them all with its own perennial 
worth, which is indeed all the worth they had, or that any 

worship can have. Human worship everywhere, 
Hero- wor- 
ship the so far as there lay any worth in it, was of the 

source of 

primitive nature of Hero-worship ; this universe wholly, 

govern- 1 "* 

meats. this temporary flame-image of the eternal, was 

i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 292. 2 Hero-worship, p. 75. 

3 Ibid., p. 101. 4 New Essays, p. 330. 



PANTHEISM. 255 

one beautiful and terrible energy of heroisms, presided 
over by a divine nobleness and Infinite Hero. Divine 
nobleness forever friendly to the noble, forever hostile to 
the ignoble : all manner of ' moral rules ' and well ' sanc- 
tioned ' too, flowed naturally out of this primeval intuition 
into nature ; — which, I believe, is still the true fountain 
of moral rules, though much forgotten at present." 1 

Not only does Carlyle lay it down as an historical fact, 
that Hero-worship was the ba'sis of primitive governments, 
but he contends that such is, and ever must be the only 
true basis of authority. He is the born ruler, and should 
be so received, who has the inherent power to 
make himself master of other men. " In this the b ouiy 

real source. 

world there is one godlike thing, the essence of 
all that ever was or ever will be of godlike in this world : 
the veneration due to human worth by the hearts of 
men." 2 In utter forgetfulness of his saying, that "religion 
is reverence for what is beneath us," Carlyle uses this 
language, and much more. " Hero-worship ; heartfelt, 
prostrate admiration ; submission burning, boundless, for 
a noblest godlike form of man, — is not this," he asks, 
" the germ of Christianity itself? " 3 " Hero-worship is the 
summary, ultimate essence and supreme perfection, of all 
manner of worship." 4 "It is certain, whatever gods or 
fetiches a man may have about him, and pay tithes to, 
and mumble prayers to, the real 'religion' that is in him 
is his practical hero-worship. Theologies, doxologies, or- 
thodoxies, heterodoxies, are not of moment except as sub- 
sidiary towards a good issue in this." 5 " The man Napoleon 

i New Essays, pp. 350, 351. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 287. 

3 Hero-worship, p. 10. * Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 33. 

« New Essays, p. 353. 



256 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it ; and 
preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, 
the tools to him that can handle them ; which is our ulti- 
mate political evangel, wherein alone can true liberty lie.' 1 1 
" What is the Bible of a nation, the practically credited 
God's message to a nation? Is it not, beyond all else, the 
authentic biography of its heroic souls? This is the real 
record of the appearances of God in the history of a na- 
tion ; this it is which teaches all men what the universe, 
when you go to work in it, really is." 2 " The early nations 
of the world, all nations so long as they continued simple 
and in earnest, knew without teaching that their 
th^rea? 611 history was an epic and Bible, the clouded 
ieop any. g^ rU gg]i n g i ma g e of a God's presence, the action 
of heroes and God-inspired men." 3 " Human intellect, 
if you consider well, is the exact summary of human 
worth;" 4 and "reverence for this intellectual power, 
loyal furtherance and obedience to it, are the outcome and 
essence of all true ' religions,' and was, and ever will be." 5 
To the man of great intellect, regardless of every other 
qualification, "belongs 'eternally the government of the 
world. Where he reigns all is blessed, and the good re- 
joice, and the wicked make wail. Where the contrary of 
him reigns, all is accursed; and the gods lament, and will, 
by terrible methods, rectify the matter by and by. Have 
you forbidden this man to rule ? Obey he cannot. He will 
retire rather, into deserts, far from you and your affairs. 
You and your affairs, once well quit of him, go by a swift 
and ever swifter road." 6 Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship, 

i Sartor Resartus, p. 138. 2 New Essays, p, 357. 3 Ibid., 409. 

* Ibid., p. 136. a ibid., p. 135. 6 Ibid., p. 321. 



PANTHEISM. 257 

and the obedience due great men as the ordained rulers 
of the world, seems to be this: certain fixed and eternal 
forces, modes of the omnipresent essence of all things, are 
manifested differently in different men. He who is most 
vividly conscious of these divine impulses, and who most 
thoroughly makes himself an instrument for carrying them 
out to their fated issue, is the true-born master, before 
whom all others should fall down and worship, letting 
him do what he will with them and theirs. " God's light," 
he says, " is human intellect ; " and he finds 

. . -r, -r, . • Carlyle's 

more of that lisfht in Robert Burns than in any ideal of a 

great man. 

other man then on the stage. The poet of Ayr- 
shire, according to him, ought to have been placed at the 
head of the English government. " Robert Burns," he says, 
"had not the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much 
as he deserved, for all our sakes, to have been found there. 
For the man was a born king of men: full of valor, of 
intelligence and heroic nobleness ; fit for far other work 
than to break his heart among poor mean mortals." 1 We 
may go as far as Carlyle in admiration of the Wonderful 
poetical power of Burns ; but was that power of just the 
kind which, in any nation or age, has shown itself able to 
rule ? He who is not master of himself should hardly be 
allowed to lord it over others in the style which hero- 
worship enjoins. We could hardly believe that Carlyle is 
serious, but should suspect him of irony oftentimes, while 
reading his expositions of his favorite doctrine, did not 
his evident earnestness forbid. We do not find any man 
in all history, however great and good and inspired, whom 
we deem worthy to be clothed with irresponsible power 

i New Essays, pp. 151, 152. 

17 



258 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

over other men. What shall be said, therefore, of a doc- 
trine which would give such power to a Burns, a Goethe, 
the Cromwells, the Fredericks, the Napoleons of the 
race ? Our hearts refuse such homage as he demands, 
even to the highest possible ideal of a hero ; much more 
do they refuse it to the men he offers us as realizing Ms 
ideal of human greatness and ability to govern ! We are 
yet to learn that the only hope of the world is its great 
men. It certainly has breathed freer, oftentimes, when 
well rid of such; of men, that is, who were great as 
judged by Carlyle's standard. Spinoza does not persuade 
our conscience, when he says, "I consider virtue and 
power one and the same thing ; " l nor can we any longer 
consent to the leadership of Carlyle, when he puts before 
us men great chiefly in their passions and ambitions, as 
the gods whom we are to obey and worship. 

Carlyle seems to suspect that his "political evangel," 
making the masses of men slaves to here and there a 

great man, may be unpalatable. He therefore 
theoiyof 1S turns special advocate, and endeavors to recom- 
£ent[ n " mend his theory of government to our favorable 

notice, arguing for it much as the American 
slaveholders were wont to argue that slavery is better 
than freedom for the laboring classes. " The very horse," 
says he, " that is permanent, how much kindlier do he and 
his master work, than the temporary one, hired on any 
hack principle yet known. I am for permanence in all 
things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest 
possible. Blessed is he that continueth where he is." 2 
This reasoning would be well enough touching the organ- 

i Ethics, Pt. IV. Def. 8. 2 Fast, Present, and Chartism, p. 280. 



PANTHEISM. 259 

ization of human society, if the mass of men have, as 
seems to be assumed by Carlyle, only an equine nature. 
What is good for the horse and his owner, is good for 
men and their rulers, if these rulers be indeed what hero- 
worship pre-supposes, in relation to those whom they 
govern. But no such inequality as this can be admitted, 
while we hold to the unity of the human race, while we 
recognize freedom, immortality, and the power of self-gov- 
ernment in all. It also strikes us oddly, that Carlyle, 
while holding this theory, should exhort every one to re- 
main where he is. The grand complaint which he makes 
is, that the great men, who monopolize all the divinity 
there is in the world, are left so often in obscurity, and not 
brought forward to be enthroned and worshipped. The 
"permanence" which he desires is not to begin, therefore, 
till after this enthronement. When the few "heroes " are 
clothed with irresponsible power over the rest of man- 
kind, who willingly accept the position of slaves under 
them, then his millennium will "begin. He laments the feu- 
dal age of English history, thinking it far happier than the 
present age of personal liberty. "Gurth's brass collar did 
not gall him ; Cedric deserved to be his master. The pigs 
were Cedric's, but Gurth would get the parings of them. 
Gurth had the inexpressible satisfaction of feeling himself 
related indissolubly, though in a rude brass-collar way, to 
his fellow-mortals on this earth. He had superiors, infe- 
riors, equals. Gurth is now ' emancipated ; ' has what we 
call ' liberty.' Liberty, I am told, is a divine thing. Lib- 
erty, when it becomes liberty to die of starvation, is not 
so divine." * It must be confessed that our author faces 

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 212. 



260 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

tliis alternative of lordship or serfhood with much show 
of personal courage. He resigns himself to the decree of 
fate, in language at least, whether that decree shall assign 
him to the place of the master or of the slave. "If thou 
art in very deed my wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead 
and impel thee to conquer me, to command me. If thou 
do know better than I what is right, I conjure thee, in the 
name of God, force me to do it, were it by never such 
brass collars, whips and handcuffs." 1 

And here we come to the point where Carlyle's doc- 
trine breaks down utterly. It is the point of practi- 
cal trial; the direct contest, between man and 
the theory is man, which is to decide who shall govern^and 

tiiitircli v. 

who submit. The waxen wings by wtiich hu- 
manity is to fly clear of all evils melt as soon as the flight 
is undertaken. The godhead, which is the sum of all 
reality, dwells in a few great men, who, by virtue of this 
indwelling divinity, ought to rule over us and ours ; but 
how to place them in position, how to secure them this 
leadership, so as to inaugurate the golden reign of heroes, 
is a question before which even Carlyle seems to see that 
his argument labors. Yet he does not quail. He refuses 
to accept no logical result of his theory. Never did a 
reorganizer of human society fice a difficulty more boldly, 
or state it more frankly. " Who is slave, and eternally 
appointed to be governed; who free, and eternally ap- 
pointed to govern ? It would much avail us to settle this 
question," says he. 2 "To increase the reverence for hu- 
man intellect, or God's light, what method is there ? 
Pray that Heaven would please to vouchsafe us each a 

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 213. 2 New Essays, p. 310. 



PANTHEISM. 261 

little of it, one by one ! As perhaps Heaven, in infinite 
mercy by stern methods, gradually will. Perhaps Heaven 
has mercy too, in these sore plagues that are oppressing 
us ; and means to teach us reverence for heroism and hu- 
man intellect, by such baleful experience of what issue 
imbecility and parliamentary eloquence lead to." 1 " What 
are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, from 
Peterloo to the Place-de-Greve itself? To the ear of wis- 
dom they are inarticulate prayers : ' guide me, govern me ! 
I am mad and miserable, and cannot guide myself.' 
Surely of all 'rights of man,' this right of the ignorant 
man to be guided by the wiser, to be gently or forcibly 
held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. 
Nature herself ordains it from the first ; society struggles 
towards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more 
and more. If freedom has any meaning, it means enjoy- 
ment of this right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. 
It is a sacred right and duty on both sides ; and the sum- 
mary of all social duties between the two. Why does 
one toil with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still 
more unweariedly, with heart and head? The brawny 
craftsman finds it no child's play to mould the unpliant, 
rugged masses ; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism : 
what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may 
see." 2 

Thus does the problem present itself to Carlyle's mind ; 
and he is shut up to a single method of solving it. The 
strongest man must hold the sceptre, the weaker must wear 
the yoke. Let us not start back from this solution, for he 
offers no other. " Divine right," he says, " take it on the 

i New Essays, p. 145. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 343. 



262 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

great scale, is divine might withal." He finds this might 
in Cromwell, more than in Napoleon; hence he deems 
the Protector worthy of more homage than the Emperor. 
This might within him, what Carlyle calls " latent valor 
and thought, content to lie latent, then burst out as in a 
blaze of heaven's lightning," 1 was the basis of his right to 
revolutionize the English government. But we think that 
Cromwell himself would have given quite another account 
of his right in that matter. Pie asked neither worship nor 
homage for his own person ; nor did he esteem himself 
strong, save in the devotion of his people with him to a 
common end, which he sought to secure by just laws 
representing the national will. "The just thing, in the 
long run," says Carlyle, " is the strong thing." " Await 
the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter 
has prospered according to his right. His right and his 
might, at the close of the account, are one and the same." 2 
" The painfullest feeling is that of your own feebleness : 
to be weak is the true misery." 3 According to Carlyle 
the Apostle was mistaken when he declared sin to be the 
great calamity, and when he gloried in his weakness as the 
occasion of j^ow^er. His glorying as he did was not a 
Christian virtue, but a foolish habit of his, since feebleness 
is " the true misery." And why is man's consciousness of 
weakness his greatest calamity ? Because " mights, I say, 
are a dreadful business to articulate correctly. Yet articu- 
lated they have to be ; the time comes for it, the need 
comes for it, and with enormous difficulty and experi- 
menting it is got done. Call it not succession of rebel- 

i Hero-worship, p. 212. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 11. 

3 Sartor Resartus, p. 128. 



PANTHEISM. 2(53 

lions ; call it rather succession of expansions, of enlighten- 
ments, gift of articulate utterance descending lower and 
lower." 2 Thus does the " ultimate political evangel," 
which was to free the world from hereditary despotisms, 
from governments by written constitutions, and from elec- 
tive democracies, and which was to usher in the golden 
reign of heroes, end in a carnival of riot and red-handed 
rebellion. A revolutionary spirit, acting itself out to the 
utmost, is the only way of lifting up to supreme power the 
few who deserve to rule, and of forcing all others down 
into proper subjection. It is with men as with oxen, where 
a trial of sheer strength decides which one shall be the 
leader of the herd. " I say sometimes," is Carlyle's lan- 
guage, " that all goes by wager of battle in this world ; 
that strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. 
Give a thing time ; if it can succeed, it is a right thing." 2 
"I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to 
struggle for itself in the world, with any sword, or tongue, 
or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it 
preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost 
bestir itself; and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it ; 
very sure that it will, in the long run, conquer nothing 
which does not deserve to be conquered. In this great 
duel nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong : the 
thing which is deepest rooted in nature, which we call 
truest, that thing will be found growing at last." 3 " The 
fighting was indispensable, for ascertaining who had the 
right over whom. By much hard fighting, as we once said, 
'the unrealities, beaten into dust, flew off;' and left the 

i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 360. 2 Hero-worship x p. 128. 

s Ibid., p. 55. 



264 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

plain reality and fact, * thou stronger than I, thou wiser 
than I ; therefore thou king, and subject I.' " 1 

Verily here is a prospect such as Robin Hood, or Goetz 
of the iron hand, would have shrunk from contemplating. 
Ishmael, whose hand was against every man, is our nearest 
example of Carlyle's true hero. He delivers the world 
over to a perpetual scene of conflict, each man for himself 
and against all others ; and the whole dominion is his, who 
for the time being manages to keep uppermost. No won- 
der that our author, in view of this " dreadful business of 
getting the mights articulated into rights," exhorts men to 
fling away fear. " It is an everlasting duty," he says, " the 
duty, of being brave. Valor is still value. The first duty 
of a man is still that of subduing fear. We must get rid 
of fear : we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are 
slavish, not true but specious ; his very thoughts are false, 
he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he has got fear 
under his feet. Odin's creed, if we disentangle the kernel 
of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be val- 
iant ; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man, 
trusting imperturbably in the aj^pointment and choice« of 
the upper Powers ; and, on the whole, not fear at all. 
Now and always, the completeness of his victory over fear 
will determine how much of a man he is." 2 The madness 
of poor old Lear, defying the darkness and storm ; or of 
Milton's Satan, braving the terrors of the fiery abyss, was 
not more audacious in its wildness than Carlyle would 
beget in each and every man. " What art thou afraid 
of? " he scornfully says to the man who has an atom of 
fear for anything in heaven, on earth, or under the earth. 

1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 245. 2 Hero-worship, p. 28 



PANTHEISM. 265 

Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and 
whimper, and go cowering and trembling ? Despicable 
biped ! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before 
thee ? Death ? Well, death ; and say the pangs of 
Tophet too, and # all that the devil and man may, will, or 
can do against thee. Hast thou not a heart ? Canst thou 
not suffer whatso it be ; and, as a child of freedom, though 
outcast, tfample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it 
consumes thee ? Let it come, then ; I will meet and 
defy it." l 

This will do. Here we take our leave of 
Carlyle and his ultimate evangel. We trust it ship con- 

trasted with 

is not want of courage, but want of misanthropy, Chris- 
which makes us shrink from the social chaos he 
invokes, — a chaos which that of old, when the earth was 
void and darkness rested on the face of the deep, but 
faintly prefigured. It is not Titanic strength, confusing 
heaven and earth with its wild rush and battle, but the 
spirit of God, brooding like a dove on human society, that 
will bring forth ' order, and serene beauty and peace. 
There is a better gospel for the nations than this panthe- 
ism, which limits all reality to a few mighty men, for wliose 
use and behoof all things else are, and were, and ever will 
be. It is with feelings of profound joy that we turn from 
Carlyle's desperate conclusion to such words as those of 
Goldwin Smith, where he says, " Of the religion of hero- 
worship I am no devotee. Great men are most precious 
gifts of Heaven, and unhappy is the nation which cannot 
produce them at its need. But their importance in history 
becomes less as civilization goes on. A Timonr or an 

1 Sartor Rcsartus, p. 131. 



266 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 

Attila towers immeasurably above his horde; but in the 
last great struggle which the world has seen, the struggle 
of the North American states for their Union, the hero 
was an intelligent and united nation. And to whatever 
age they may belong, the greatest, the most godlike of 
men, are men, not gods. They are the offspring, though 
the highest offspring, of their age. They would be nothing 
without their fellow-men. Carlyle prostrates morality be- 
fore greatness. We might as well bow down before the 
hundred-handed idol of the Hindoos. To moral force we 
may bow down; but moral force resides and can reside in 
those only who obey the moral law. It is found in the 
highest degree in those at whom hero-worship sneers." x 
Set over against the political ravings of Carlyle, who 
knows no God, and nongovernment, human or divine, save 
what he finds in great men, how grandly true are the lines 
of Wordsworth, in his Sonnets dedicated to liberty,, where 
he says, — 

" A few plain instincts, and a few plain rules, 

Have wrought more for mankind, in the disastrous hour, 
Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 2 

Every right feeling in us responds instantly to these 
noble words. And a Greater than Wordsworth or Gold- 
win Smith has taught us, in language still sending an 
inspiration through the ages, that not the lofty, but the 
lowly-hearted are the light of life to our world. Let the 
pantheist leave his great men, whom he regards as the 

1 Three English Statesmen (Harpers, 1867), pp. 79-81. 

2 1 give the lines as usually quoted, though changed from their original form. 
See Sonnets dedicated to Liberty (English ed., p. 239), Part II., Sonnet 10. 



PANTHEISM. 267 

Only Shekinah. Let him go back from his hero-worship, 
through Him who is the living way, till he finds again that 
Father of his spirit from whom he has wandered, and he 
shall know the truth. He shall know that truth which 
breaks the fatal dream of philosophy, and leads her forth 
into the liberty of the children of God. For it is an ever- 
lasting truth, which all history illustrates and every noblest 
thing in us welcomes, that God chooses not the mighty, 
but the weak to confound the mighty ; that it pleases him 
to hide from the wise and prudent what he reveals unto 
babes ; and that in the blessed ages to come, when man- 
kind shall be at peace and walk together as brethren, no 
imperial chieftain, but a little child shall lead them. 



LECTURE VII. 

Pantheism in the Foem of Self -Woeship. 

The pantheist, holding that all objects in the universe 
manifest its one divine essence, will find that essence 
more especially amid those investigations to which his en- 
ergies are devoted. Goethe, with his passion for culture, 
found it in art, and the aesthetic relations of things. Car- 
lyle, the eager student of history, found it in the great 
men of the world. But there are other mental peculiari- 
ties of pantheists, giving especial form to the common 
doctrine which they hold. The class of minds 
ism! VKluaI which naturally tend to individualism in their 
workings is perhaps as large as the aesthetic or 
the historic and reformatory. Their tendency is subjective 
rather than objective; they believe in the ideal, and dis- 
trust the so-called real. Where this class of thinkers 
locate their Shekinah, when under the influence of pan- 
theism, it is important next to consider. 

What has already been said of Carlyle in relation to 
hero-worship may, in relation to this subjective pantheism, 
be with justice said of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He repre- 
sents, perhaps better than any other popular 
by Emerson, author, the introspective tendency in modern 
thought. The subject could hardly be treated 



PANTHEISM. 269 

apart from his writings ; and we may safely conclude that 
we are masters of it, not needing to extend our researches, 
when we thoroughly understand him. Representing this 
individualism as he does, and carrying it to the point of 
■self-worship under the lead of pantheism, I shall fulfil the 
task of the present lecture, if I give a faithful account of 
his philosophy, considered both in its substance and its 
practical development. And that the account may be 
faithful, with the least possible chance of misrepresentation 
by me, I shall, as in the case of Carlyle, allow less space 
to my own comments than to the words of the author 
himself. What I give, let me also say, must not be re- 
garded as a full and complete estimate of Emerson. It is 
in a single relation only that I propose now to 
examine his writings. He may have many JJlatment! 
merits which the present inquiry does not espe- 
cially contemplate, though I shall hope to recognize them 
all as they incidentally occur. My main object will be 
gained, if I make clear his philosophical views and their 
bearings, with a regard to the logical connections and 
progress of the thought, such as his own pages do not 
deign to give. 

It is with feelings of relief that I turn from 

the works of Carlyle to those of Emerson, for I with Car- 

lyie. 
cannot help the impression that the latter is 

much the greater man of the two : not a reader of so 

many books perhaps, nor so accurate and exhaustive a 

student of history ; but higher toned, of a serener spirit, 

with less in his writings that is ephemeral ; central in his 

thought, and balanced in expression, so as to speak not for 

a day or generation, but for all time. While the peculiar 



270 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

phase of thinking which he represents is in the world, he 
will be recognized as one of its major prophets ; as having 
at times, I think, surpassed any other writer in uttering 
the spirit of a subjective and ideal pantheism. Should the 
present age of materialism pass away, and there be an- 
other revival of the a-priori philosophy, as will no doubt 
be the case, I predict that Emerson will be read, while 
Carlyle is comparatively forgotten. That energy which 
Carlyle lets off in stormy passion, Emerson carefully hus- 
bands, and puts into the very substance of his thinking. 
He never raves, like his friend across the sea, but is al- 
ways self-contained, measured in his statements, well- 
poised and calm. The poet Lowell is hardly less just 
than witty where he says, speaking of the two men, — 

"To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer; 
Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer : 
He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, trulier; 
If C.'s an original, E.'s more peculiar : 
That he's more of a man you might say of one, 
Of the other, he's more of an Emerson; 
C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb, 
E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim." * 

It is easy to see, while reading Emerson, that 
lent temper. ne * s a person of very great sensitiveness; that 
he has felt keenly the sharp antagonism of early 
friends. But though this longing for the love of good 
men, and pain at the absence of it, appear in many places, 
I have looked in vain for any weak word of complaint. 
There is but little that looks like recrimination anywhere 
in his writings. Few authors, so roughly criticised as he, 

i Fable for the Critics. 



PANTHEISM. 271 

show so little vindictiveness. Even those who ignorantly 
and stupidly abuse him, he treats with good-natured con- 
descension rather than hard contempt. So free are his 
pages from the spirit of controversy, that as you read on 
the comment you make is, " This man does not seem to 
know how severely the views he is here stating have 
been denounced." It is a fact, I believe, that he has never 
formally replied to any of his critics. Certainly a man so 
without enmities, and whom any one may assail feeling 
that he will not retaliate, should be resisted only in the 
interest of truth, and with a spirit more generous, if pos- 
sible, than his own. In all that I am now about to offer I 
shall not speak against him, nor affect to speak for him; 
but, as just intimated, shall the rather permit him to speak 
for himself. I have already shown what pantheism, in its 
last analysis, is ; and if he is in full sympathy with that 
doctrine, both he and his friends ought to desire that his 
readers should know the fact. 

Having compared Emerson with Carlyle, to 
the disadvantage of the latter in some respects, tone than 

t • n Goethe. 

1 wish also to say that, to my view, he stands 
on a higher plane than Goethe even. By this I do not 
mean that his intellectual range is broader than Goethe's. 
He has no such knowledge of natural science as Goethe 
had ; is not, like him, at home in all the literatures of the 
world ; but he more uniformly speaks to what is noblest 
and best in us. There is far less in his pages to offend 
our conscience and self-respect. One feels, all along, that 
he, is reading a man whose thoughts and life are pure. 
However dangerous the underlying theory, yet, by a 
charming inconsistency, the immediate appeal is to our 



272 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

honor, our love of the good, our sense of right. Being 
less true than Goethe to his main speculation, he is more 
true to the moral convictions of mankind. I quote with 
pleasure his own judgment against Goethe, as showing, 
however his theory may tally with the German poet's, that 
his New England blood will not let him indorse that the- 
ory, when it is practically carried out to all the results. 
Emerson says, " I dare not say that Goethe has ascended 
to the highest grounds from which genius has spoken. 
He has not worshipped the highest unity. He is incapable 
of self-surrender to the moral sentiment. There are nobler 
strains in poetry than any he has sounded. There are 
writers poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more 
touches the heart. Goethe can never be dear to men. 
His is not even the devotion to pure truth; but to truth 
for the sake of culture." 1 

In one respect it is not so hard to enucleate the pan- 
theism of Emerson as that of Goethe and Carlyle. He 
rarely loses sight of his major premise. His writings, 
whatever the occasion or immediate purpose, seem al- 
ways to be instinct with the spirit of Spinozism. That is 
the string on which they are all strung together; their 
one logical connection, if they have no other. I am con- 
fident that any one, assuming this to be the 

Monotony. . 

clew to his writings, would find but little diffi- 
culty in tracing their harmony, — nay, even their monot- 
ony. I shall follow this thread only a little way, omitting 
much that is strictly pertinent, and keeping to his more 
elaborate essays, in the present inquiry. It is true that we 

1 Representative Men (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1850), pr. 278, 279. 



PANTHEISM. 273 

shall not find, even in these essays, frequent allusions to 
Spinoza, or to his doctrine under its proper designation. 
Emerson is shy of names ; and though he has a confession 
of faith, he is careful not to give it to his readers in any 
formulated shape. Nor is it necessary to say, as some of 
his critics have, that he thus avoids the well-known and 
abhorred phraseology because he wishes to deceive his 
readers, imbuing them with the principles of pantheism 
while they are off their guard. He is no such zealot. He 
cares little for the reception his doctrine gets in other 
minds. It is not to any taint of Jesuitism, but to the 
purely literary bent of his genius, that this impatience of 
technical terms is due. We need not be misled, however, 
though failing to find the usual superscription on the coin ; 
the ring of the metal tells us, more clearly than 
any image could, what is its nature. Very tunT encla ~ 
often where Emerson uses the words " soul." 
" spirit," " mind," "intellect," we shall find, when we un- 
derstand him, that he does not refer to anything individ- 
ual or personal, but to an all-surrounding, all-filling sub- 
stance, which he calls divine, and regards as constituting 
the whole of reality. " Soul," or " the soul," seems to be 
his favorite designation of this essence, which Spinoza 
calls substance, Schelling the subject-object, and Hegel 
the absolute idea ; as where he says, " the universe is the 
externization of the soul." * But he uses other terms, 
such as "life," "light," "God," "the Holy Ghost," "Pan," 
"Fortune," "Minerva," "Proteus." He has added one 
term to the vocabulary of pantheism, which merits partic- 
ular notice. " All the universe over," says he, " there is 

i Essays (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1858), Vol. II., p. 19. 

18 



274 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

but one thing, this old Two-Face, creator-creature, mind- 
matter, right-wrong, of which arty proposition may be 
affirmed or denied." x Old Two-Face, forsooth ! 
f2J?» Tw °~ We fancy that at such a designating as this of 
the absolute and sole reality, even Hegel's hair 
would have bristled. But the speculative views of Emer- 
son will not be obscure, I think, as we go forward in our 
inquiry, whatever may happen to be his phraseology. 
I shall, in the first place, present passages from Emer- 
son's writings which lay down the doctrine of 
Comprehen- pantheism in its more generic forms. What 

sive state- l ° 

merits of words, for instance, could utter the doctrine of 

pantheism. ' 

, Spinoza more decisively than these ? " Under 

all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb 
and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of 
real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, 
but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding 
negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, 
parts and times within itself. Nature, virtue, truth, are 
the influx from thence." 2 Or we might .take this : " The 
philosophical perception of identity through endless muta- 
tions, makes man know the Proteus." 3 Or the following 
might be confidently relied on to sustain our position : 
" The ultimate fact we reach on every topic, is the resolu- 
tion of all into the ever-blessed One. Com- 
au things merce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, elo- 
quence, personal weight, are somewhat; and 
engage my attention as examples of its presence and 
action." 4 In his essay on History Emerson says, " There 

i Essays, Vol. II., p. 236. 2 ibid., Vol. I., p. 10S. 

3 Ibid., p. 28. * Ibid., pp. 61, 62. 



PANTHEISM. 275 

is one mind common to all individual men. Whoever 

hath access to this universal mind is a party 

to all that .is or can be done, for this is the only 

and sovereign agent." 1 And the poetical motto, prefixed 

to that essay, is, — 

" There is no great and no small 
To the soul that maketh all ; 
And where it cometh all things are, 
And it cometh everywhere." 

Again he says, " I am much struck in literature by the 
appearance that one person wrote all the books ; there is 
such equality and identity both of judgment and 
point of view in the narrative, that it is plainly 
the work of one all-seeing, all-hearing gentleman. When 
I read Proclus it is not Proems, but a piece of nature and 
fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see the author's 
author, than himself." 2 The discovery that the author of 
Proclus, and of every other writer, is a " gentleman," hardly 
equals in sublimity the announcement of the ancient sage 
that " God is a geometer," but it certainly 
leaves us in no doubt as to the speculative £ od a £ en - 

1 tleman. 

views of our modern philosopher. ' Emerson 
further says, " Virtue is the incoming of God himself, or 
absolute existence." 3 " God is the all-fair. Truth, and 
goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same 
all." 4 " Cause and effect are two sides of one fact." 5 
"The soul strives amain to live and work through all 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 3. 2 Ibid., Vol. II., pp. 224, 225. 

3 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 109. 

4 Miscellanies, (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1858), p. 22. 

5 Essays, Vol. I., p. 285. 



276 HALF TRUTHS AN£ THE TRUTH. 

things. It would be the only fact." l "The true doctrine 
of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts 
in every moss and cobweb." 2 Emerson's theory of love, 
with all the charms of social and domestic life to which it 
gives birth, is purely pantheistic. It is the 

Love. . ,...., _ . , 

omnipresent divinity m the two sexes, which, 
revealed as the positive and negative poles of a resistless 
magnetism, draws them together. Why does man invol- 
untarily love a beautiful woman ? Because she " suggests 
to him," says our author, " the presence of that which is 
within the beauty. Beholding the traits of the divine 
beauty, the lover ascends to the highest beauty, to the 
love and knowledge of the divinity." 3 He gives a defini- 
tion of prayer equally novel, and equally faithful to his 
constant doctrine : " Prayer is the contemplation of the 

facts of life from the highest point of view. It 

Prayer. 

is the soliloquy of the beholding and jubilant 
soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works 
good."- 4 This language is a perfect rendering of the 
meaning of Spinoza where he says, " The intellectual love 
of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love where- 
with God loves himself." 5 Prayer, as thus strangely de- 
fined, is not the offering of petitions by man to his Maker ; 
it includes all action of whatever form. " The prayer of 
the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of 
the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 
prayers heard throughout nature." 6 It is not a person, 
but the impersonal soul of the universe, which prays ; and 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 93. 2 Ibid., p. 91. 

3 Ibid., pp. 164, 165. 4 Ibid., p. 68. 

6 Ethics, Pt. V., Prop. XXXVI. e Essays, Vol. I., p. 68. 



PANTHEISM. 277 

what we call our consciousness of praying is but the talk- 
ing of that soul to itself. 

This definition of prayer leads me to notice what the 
author has to say on the subject of personality. His views 
here are perfectly at one with those of the most 
famous pantheists, "I wish to speak with all ^n a ha^?o r " 
respect of persons," says he, " but sometimes I sonaiity. r ~ 
must pinch myself to keep and preserve the due 
decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they 
are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat 
them as individuals. Though the uninspired man cer- 
tainly finds jDersons a conveniency in household matters, 
the divine man does not respect them : he sees them as 
racks of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives 
over the surface of the waters." * " We learn that God 
is ; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of 
him. The idealism of Berkeley is a crude statement of the 
idealism of Jesus ; and that is a crude statement of the 
fact, that all nature is a rapid efflux of goodness executing 
and organizing itself." 2 " From within or from behind, 
a light shines through us upon things, and makes us 
aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." 3 " Let us 
go for the universal ; for the magnetism, not for the nee- 
dles. Human life and its persons are poor empirical 
pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis 
fatuus. The great gods of fame fade before the f^f" 18 
eternal." 4 " This deep power in which we 
exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not 
only self-sufficing and perfect every hour, but the act of 

i Essays, Vol. II., p. 227. 2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 281. 

3 Ibid., p. 246. * Ibid., Vol. II., p. 221. 



278 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the 
subject and the object, are one." 1 " The larger experience 
of man discovers the identical nature appearing through 
them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the im- 
personal. In all conversation between two persons, tacit 
reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. 
That third party, or common nature, is not social ; it is 

impersonal, it is God." 2 " I clap my hands in 
2>nai mper ~ infantine joy and amazement, before the first 

opening to me of this august magnificence, old 

with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young 

with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert." 3 

It is sufficiently clear, in the light of these ex- 

condnsion tracts, that I do Emerson no wrong in ranking 



him with the disciples of Spinoza. On the con- 
trary, should I not be doing him a most palpable injustice 
did I deny to him the pantheistic doctrine which he so 
plainly and earnestly professes ? Our respect for him as a 
thinker should lead us to yield him the position he has so 
distinctly taken, and which he defines almost in the exact 
terms of the most famous teachers of pantheism. A writer 
who declares that persons are "poor empirical pretensions," 
ripples on the ocean of real being ; who says that subject 
and object, the seer and the thing seen, are one ; who 
affirmS that the personal brings us to the impersonal, which 
is God, or the sole reality, — this writer must be set down 
as a pantheist, or language may mean just the opposite of 
what it plainly asserts, and Hegel himself was not a 
Hegelian, nor Spinoza a Spinozist. 

But the nature of Emerson's doctrine will be even more 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 245. * ibid., p. 252. » Ibid., Vol. II., pp. 73, 74. 



PANTHEISM. 279 

manifest, as we go forward, in the second place, 
to consider his method. Is this subjective method. 11 ' 8 
or objective ? Where does he find the one 
absolute reality he so firmly believes in ? So far as this 
question goes, he is more true, I think, to the subjective 
and transcendental method, than either Goethe or Carlyle. 
He finds the absolute essence of things, not in society, 
with the German ; nor in great men, with the Scotchman ; 
but in each individual consciousness. In this respect he 
is nearly, if not quite, on the same ground as Fichte. 
True, there is at times a gush of hero-worship, reminding 
one of Carlyle; but He looks steadily within for the 
primary advent of divinity. The divineness of the out- 
ward is but secondary, the shadow of the true God. It is 
reflected deity, either conscious or unconscious. "Plants 
are the young of the world," says he, "vessels of health 
and vigor ; but they grope ever upward towards conscious- 
ness ; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan 
their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The maples 
and ferns are still uncorrupt ; yet no doubt, when they 
come to consciousness, they too will curse and swear." 1 
"Every animal of the barn-yard, the field, and the forest, 
of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, 
has contrived to get a footing and to leave the 
print of its features and form in some one or nesTth " 8 
other of these upright, heaven-speaking faces." 2 Zllh° M 
Such remarks, occurring in various places, show 
that Emerson holds to the doctrine of identity, as taught 
by Schelling ; but he has chosen not to state that doctrine, 
for the most part, in the Schellingian form. His method 

* Essays, Vol. II., p. 177. a Ibid., Vol. I., p. .29. 



280 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

is subjective and ideal. His private consciousness is the 
door through which he passes to the universal fact. That 
personality with which we flatter ourselves, is an illusion 
while considered as the self. It is an efflux of the Eternal 
One ; and to recognize it as such is to behold, at a glance, 
all that is, or was, or ever can be. " Standing on the bare 
ground," says our author, " my head uplifted into infinite 
space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a 
e^oStfm? transparent eye-ball ; I am nothing ; I see all ; 
the* currents of the universal being circulate 
through me ; I am part or parcel of God." 1 Thus it ap- 
pears that the charge of egotism, which ignorant readers 
have so often made against Emerson, is thoroughly unjust 
and false. The object of his adoration is not the empirical 
self, but the transcendental,- — by which "self," as ordi- 
narily understood, is swallowed up. All bis egotism is an 
entire absorption of the finite ego into the eternal. 

Man, according to our author, is nothing real and sub- 
stantial, but only a passing phenomenon, the form in which 
the universal fact is for the time being self-conscious. 
"Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; 
the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is 
equally related ; the eternal One. 1 ' 2 It is Spinoza who 
says, " We feel and are persuaded that we are 
S ? min!° n eternal ; " and the language of Emerson, often- 
times, is but an echo of these words. "The 
soul in man is an immensity' not possessed, and that can- 
not be possessed," 3 'says he. " The heart in thee is the 
heart of all ; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is 
there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterrupt- 

1 Miscellanies, p. 8. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 245. 3 Ibid., p. 246. 



PANTHEISM. 281 

edly in endless circulation, through all men ; as the water 
of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one." * 
" Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. 
Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. 
It is indefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it per- 
vades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being 
is in man." 2 "The soul's communication of truth is the 
highest event in nature, since it then does not give some- 
what from itself, bukgives itself, or passes into and becomes 
that man whom it enlightens ; or, in proportion to the 
truth he receives, it takes him into itself." 3 As the soul, 
which is the divine and universal fact, is present in all 
persons, making them whatsoever they are, "so it is in 
every period of life. It is adult already in the infant man. 
In my dealing with my child, my Latin and my Greek, my 
accomplishments and my money stead me nothing. If I 
am wilful he sets up his will against mine ; but if I re- 
nounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as 
umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the 
same soul." 4 

But the view of individual man, which we find in Emer- 
son's works, is no more pantheistic than his definition of 
genius. He argues that any unusual elevation 

h . . ,. . ... , . „ Theva- 

of spirit, religious or artistic, is purely an influx rieties of 

genius 

of the divine essence in the form of what we forms of 

the diyine 

call our mind. Such is all inspiration ; that consdous- 

1 ness. 

of Paul, of George Fox, of Swedenborg, of 

Michael Angelo. "The revivals of the Calvinistic 

churches, the experiences of the Methodists," he says, 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 267. 2 Ibid., p. 247. 

9 Ibid., p. 255. * Ibid., p. 254. 



282 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

" are varying forms of that shudder of awe and delight 
with which the individual soul always mingles with the 
universal soul." x The natural genius of these Calvinists 
and Methodists, that is, is religious. They have a special 
aptitude for receiving the divine substance in that form 
which constitutes pious enthusiasm. Their mistake is in 
believing that God is outside of themselves, and that their 
excitement is anything more than a transient shadow of 
him. His going forth into self-consciousness is what makes 
the " revival," as it makes all that we admire, or love, or 
wonder at in human achievement. "When we have 
broken our God of tradition, and ceased from our God of 
rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. 
It is the doubling of the heart itself; nay, the infinite en- 
largement of tlue heart with a power of growth to a new 
infinity on every side." 2 " An individual is an enclosure. 
Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, 
are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close 
or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the 
manners of his soul." 3 " Each man has his vocation. 
The talent is the call. This talent and this call depend on 
his organization, or the mode in which the general soul 
incarnates itself in him." 4 "The maker of all things and 
all persons stands behind us, and casts his dread om- 
niscience through us over things." 5 " The wit of man, his 
strength, his grace, his tendency, his art, is the grace and 
presence of God." 6 Any fresh generalization of philoso- 
phy "is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind." 
And " Empedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought," 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 257. « Ibid., p. 266. 3 ibid., Vol. II., p. 97. 

* Ibid., Vol. I., p. 126. e Ibid., p. 255. « Miscellanies, p. 186. 



PANTHEISM. 283 

says Emerson, "when he said, 'I am God.'" x Not while 
we go searching abroad, but while we stay at home, keep- 
ing the door of consciousness open, the great spirit of the 
universe not only comes in, but makes that into which it 
comes ; not only sups with us, but is that with which it 
sups. He constitutes our private thought, in the depths 
of which he is manifested. "God enters by a private 
door into every individual ; " 2 and this melting of subject 
and object into a single consciousness, is a blessed experi- 
ence, which words must forever labor in vain to utter. 
" Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of 
the soul. The simplest person, who in his integrity wor- 
ships God, becomes God ; yet forever and ever the influx 
of this better and universal self is new and unsearch- 
able." 3 

Having seen that Emerson's God is the same as Spi- 
noza's, and that, like Spinoza, he finds it in his private con- 
sciousness, let us, in the third place, see what he has to say 
of its evolution or " becomino\" What is the law 

° Teaches the 

of this evolution ? Does the noumenon mirror pantheistic 

latalism. 

itself in phenomena freely, choosing whether 
it will or not, or under conditions of the sternest neces- 
sity? Here also, as we might expect, our author teaches 
the pantheistic fatalism. He does not believe in a freedom 
of will involving the power of alternate choice. The law 
of man's action is, to his view, the same as that of nature, 
— spontaneous and inevitable. Whatever we do, we can- 
not do otherwise. Any theory of a moral government 
which involves accountability, and which is sustained by 
penalties and rewards, he regards as chimerical, — a fancy 

i Miscellanies, p. 190. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 297. 8 Ibid., p. 265. 



284 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

of certain sects in theology. The only liberty is sponta- 
neity; and the perfection of this automatic activity is in 
its absolute necessity. The universe is but one, and for- 
ever acts and reacts upon itself, compassed in the folds of 
an eternal fate. This necessity of action, whose endless 
coil lies at the centre of our being, is the freedom which, 
when joyfully yielded to, makes us free indeed. 

But on this topic, as on others, I shall not assume to 
present Emerson in my own words, so much as in the lan- 
guage which he himself has largely used. In his essay on 
fate he says, " We trace fate in matter, mind, 

All things J m ■ 

subject to and morals. A part of fate is the freedom of 

fate. r 

man." 1 " The day of days, the great day of 
the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to 
the unity of things ; to the omnipresence of law ; sees 
that what is must be, and ought to be, or is the best." 2 
He quotes with approbation the stanza of the Mohamme- 
dan poet, — 

" On two days it steads not to run from thy grave, 
The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 
On the first neither balm nor physician can save, 
Nor thee, on the second, the universe slay." 3 

" A man's power," says he in the same essay, " is hooped 
about by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he 
touches on every side, till he learns its arc." 4 "A breath 
of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in 
the direction of the right anci the necessary." 5 " Let us 
build altars to the blessed unity, which holds nature and 
souls in perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve 

i Conduct of Life (Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1860), pp. 18, 19. 

2 Ibid., p. 21. s Ibid., p. 3. * Ibid., p. 16. e ibid., p. 23. 



PANTHEISM. 285 

an universal end. Let us build altars to the beautiful 
necessity, which secures that all is made of one piece; 
that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal 
and plant, food and eater, are of one kind." 1 A severe 
critic might be tempted to infer, from the way in which 
the doctrine of unity is here carried out, things not a little 
shocking to our authors sensibilities. If animal and 
plant, food and eater are one, our horror at the deed of 
the cannibal, who slays his guest and makes a meal of the 
victim, is wholly out of place. We all are continually 
living upon some form of the blessed unity, either vegeta- 
ble or animal ; nor can we destroy any life, in any realm 
of nature below us, save by a kind of murder and suicide. 
There is not one flesh of men and another of birds, as 
Paul thought, but all creatures are the same flesh, and 
beast and herb are one ; and altars should be built to the 
beautiful necessity which secures this eternal fact. 

Everything being what it is by that inevitable fate which 
rules the undivided whole, no person, according to Em- 
erson, is in the last analysis responsible for his own char- 
acter. The case of politicians, who change their prin- 
ciples as the influences brought to bear on them change, 
is adduced ; and their inconsistencies are accounted for 
purely on the ground of natural and irresistible 
laws. "The rabid democrat," says our author, ? 7 t £ e er can 
"as soon as he is senator and rich man, has heroes? 11 
ripened beyond the possibility of sincere radi- 
calism, and unless he can resist the sun, he must be con- 
servative the remainder of his days." 2 Could any doc- 
trine be more comforting than this to the outlawed rebel, 

i Conduct of Life, pp. 41, 42. 2 Essays, Vol. II., p. 23(5. 



286 HALF TEUTHS AND THE TKTJTH. 

who has sought to destroy the government of his country? 
Though he stood high in the confidence of the public, and 
was the trusted servant of the nation, so that his treachery 
drew immeasurable ruin after it, yet he has no occasion to 
reproach himself; he was ripened into the wickedness as" 
apples are ripened. "The only sin," says this apologist 
for wrong-doing, "is limitation." 1 At times he seems 
almost to regret the fatalism in which he so firmly be- 
lieves, as where he says, " I would gladly be moral, and 
keep due metes and bounds, which I clearly love, and allow 
the most to the will of man ; but I have set my heart on 
honesty, and I can see nothing at last in success or failure 
but more or less of vital force supplied from the eternal." 2 
" Character is nature in the highest form." 3 " The same 
law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the vir- 
tues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better." 4 
" What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, 
which adjust the relations of all persons to each, by the 
mathematical measure of their beings and havings." 5 
" We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial 
life were not also natural. The smoothest-curled courtier 
in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and 
aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, 

and is directly related there, amid essences and 
uVai hfeiiat billets-doux, to Himmaleh mountain-chains and 

the axis of the globe." "As children in their 
play run behind each other, and seize one by the ears and 
make him walk before them, so is the spirit our unseen 
pilot. All art is a portion of history ; a stroke drawn in 

i Essays, Vol. I. p. 279. 2 Ibid., Vol. II., p. 71. 3 ibid., p. 106. 

* Ibid., Vol. I., p. 285. 5 Ibid., p. 134. • Ibid., Vol. II., p. 177. 



PANTHEISM. 287 

the portrait of that inevitable fate, perfect and beautiful, 
according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their 
beatitude.'' 1 

Now, if Emerson were wont to deal in tropes and rhe- 
torical nourishes, we might abate somewhat from the pal- 
pable force of his words. But he is a literalist. He con- 
tends, as we have already seen, that those who believe in 
a personal God, and hold that they might act otherwise 
than they do, are deceived by their rhetoric. 
Even his poetry, he claims, is the exact Ian- uJJ! o7 °vords 
guage of philosophy. When he says, " Every 1 n c ° a [ rhetor - * 
one must act after his kind, be he asp or angel," 
he can mean nothing less than universal fatalism. The 
passages I have quoted from him on this subject are not 
to be taken figuratively, but literally. We are to under- 
stand him as meaning just what his words plainly imply, 
when he says, " I have been floated into this thought, this 
hour, this connection of. events, by secret currents of 
might and mind; and my ingenuity and wilfulness have 
not thwarted, have not aided to any appreciable degree." 2 
The author shows a desire to see his views adopted by 
other persons. And here it is, as we see the case, that his 
doctrine of fatalism presses. For why attempt to make 
disciples, we say, of beings whom an iron necessity rules 
in every act? But he anticipates our criticism, saying, 
"If you say, 'the acceptance of the vision is 
also the act of God,' I shall not seek to pen- J^Stoy*?* 
etrate the mystery ; I admit the force of what 
you say." 3 His utterances of doctrine, and all his con- 
duct, are alike the forthputtings of an eternal fate, and he 

i Miscellanies, p. 201. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 298. 3 Miscellanies, pp. 212, 213. 



288 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

has only this account to give of them. His struggle to 
make others believe as he believes is unnatural, since God 
himself is in every instance both master and disciple ; and 
this pantheism, which he offers as a substitute for our tra- 
ditional faith, is at last confessed to be as inexplicable as 
anything in Calvinism ! A part of fate are his writings 
and all his wise sayings. " The universal nature, too 
strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits on his neck, 
and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to 
vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an 
exact allegory." 1 "By virtue of this inevitable nature, 
private will is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or our 
imperfections, your genius will speak for you, and mine for 
me. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, 
but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by 
avenues we never left open, and thoughts go out of our 
minds through avenues we never voluntarily opened." 2 

Having seen what the fundamental doctrine of Emerson 
is, in its substance, method, and law, let us next 

The objective . . 

world in the consider some 01 the conclusions to which it 

light of Em- . - , . . 

erson's phi- leads him, within the two great realms of nature 

losophy. & 

and history. The soul of all things, found pri- 
marily in his own consciousness, and forever acting within 
the ring of necessity, mirrors itself forth, through him, 
under the forms of mind and matter. Here we have, with 
hardly a shade of difference, Spinoza's infinite attributes 
of thought and extension. History and nature are not 
radically distinct. They are, the one more, and the other 
less, vivid manifestations of the absolute essence of all 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 30. 2 Ibid., p. 260. 



PANTHEISM. 289 

things. In human history the universal soul is still self- 
conscious ; whereas in everything below the plane of his- 
tory its reflex is too faint to produce consciousness. His- 
tory is God conscious ; nature is God struggling towards 
consciousness. All our study, in these two departments 
of knowledge, is God looking at himself; beholding as it 
were his own image reflected to him in a mirror. All re- 
corded science, and the annals of the ages, are his autobi- 
ography ; the naturalist, or historian, being but the pen 
with which he traces a record of his own action and reac- 
tion, in one or more of the successive stadia. Our author 
might therefore, in strict conformity to his doctrine, bring 
the whole objective world under a single treatment. But 
he has chosen to treat nature and history separately ; and 
hence in giving his views I shall regard the distinction. 

Taking up first his view of history, we find that he 
holds it to be simply a conscious reflex of the universal 
soul. " The soul," he says, " looketh steadily forward, 
creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. 
She has no dates, nor rites, nor. persons, nor specialties, 
nor men. The soul knows only the soul ; the 

in i n 1- i'ii History ab- 

web or events is the flowing robe m which she soroeri into 
is clothed." * " Everything the individual sees 
without him corresponds to his states of mind. The 
primeval world I can dive to in myself, as well as grope 
for it in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and 
torsos of ruined villas." 2 " There is no age, or state of 
society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not 
somewhat corresponding in each man's life. He is greater 
than all the geography and all the governments in the 

i Essays, Vol. T., p. 249. 2 ibid., p. 21. 

19 



290 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

world. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Is- 
lands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of 
all eras in my own mind." J " A man shall be the temple, 
of fame. I shall find in him the fore-world, the age of 
gold, the apples of knowledge, the Argonantic expedition, 
the calling of Abraham, the building of the temple, the 
advent of Christ, the dark ages, the revival of letters, the 
Reformation, the discovery of new lands, the opening of 
new regions and new sciences. He shall be .the priest of 
Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing 
of the morning stars and all the recorded benefits of heaven, 
and earth." 2 "The advancing man discovers how deep a 
property he has in literature, in all fable as well as in all 
history. His own secret biography he finds in lines won- 
derfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was 
born. One after another he comes up in his private adven- 
tures with every fable of iEsop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of 
Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them 

All htera- 7 7 ' 

turethc with his own head and hands." 3 "Of the uni- 

biography 

of eachman. versa i mind each individual is one more incar- 
nation. All its properties consist in him." 4 " Ail litera- 
ture writes the biography of each man. Books, monu- 
ments, pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he 
finds the lineaments he is forming. The silent and the 
eloquent praise him and accost him, and he is stimulated 
wherever he moves as by personal allusions." 5 " History 
is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more 
than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and be- 



Essays, Vol. I, pp. 7, 8, 9. 2 Ibid., p. 35. 3 ibid., p. 27. 

* Ibid., p, 4, e Jbid., p. 7. e Ibid., p. 58. 



PANTHEISM. 291 

"I am owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 1 

" How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, 
of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind ! 
I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are mine as 
much as theirs." 2 " Civil and natural history, the history 
of art and literature, must be explained from individual 
history, or must remain words. There is nothing but is 
related to us, nothing that does not interest us, — king- 
dom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all 
things are in man. The priestcraft of the east and west; 
of the Magian^Brahman, Druid, and Inca, is expounded 
in the individual's private life. He finds Assyria and the 
mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself has laid the 
courses." 3 

Such is history, according to Emerson : the essence of 
deity or reality projected forward in actual events-, under 
the forms of each man's private consciousness. If this 
theory of the subjective essence of all facts be true, the 
author has acted very foolishly when he has 
visited different parts of the world, and read A rracticai 

1 ' result. 

tedious volumes of antiquarian lore, to get a 
knowledge of mankind in present and former times ; for he 
held within him, all the while, everything which he sought. 
Fireside travels are as good as any, and as literal, though 
they be but dreams, if the roots of all things' are in man. 
It sometimes happens that persons cursed with a prodi- 

1 Motto to Essay on History. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 25. 

3 Ibid., pp. 16, 25, 26. 



2D2 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

gious vanity, or with that defect of memory which consists 
in remembering too much, illustrate our author's doctrine 
in their conversation and public discourse, — recounting 
experiences which they never passed through, and describ- 
ing scenes in parts of the world which they never visited. 
They are simply reducing the Emersonian theory to prac- 
tice ; yet sensible people feel constrained to regard such 
talk as lying, and those who have fallen into the habit of 
thus retailing " impersonal " experiences are held to be 
candidates for the jail or the madhouse. A pantheist once 
pressed this subjective theory of history on the attentio'n 
of Nathanael Emmons. "Doctor," said he, "I was with 
Adam and Eve in the garden at the eating of the apple." 
" Yes," was the quick reply of the theologian, " I have 
always understood that a third person was present." The 
justice of this reply is equal to its wit, for the pronoun I 
cannot refer to an impersonal existence; if we know and 
are persuaded that we are eternal, as Emerson and Spi- 
noza teach, we are bound to have a distinct and personal 
remembrance of that eternity. 

But let us also look at the theory of nature, which our 
author holds on the basis of his general doctrine. Nature 
is the universal soul projected beyond the sphere of self- 
consciousness. God is the great light whose 
^latJonof ra y s ? constantly going out and returning, make 
all things. When they return from points so 
near as to awaken consciousness, they make history ; but 
when from points more remote, so that the eternal centre 
is not conscious of the reflection, they make nature. This 
doctrine will easily appear, from Emerson's own words. 
" The world," he says, " proceeds from the same spirit as 



PANTHEISM. 203 

man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a 
projection of God in the unconscious." * " We see the 
world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the 
tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, 
is the soul." 2 "I am somehow receptive of the great 
soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and 
feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change 
and pass. More and more the surges of everlasting nature 
enter into me. Revering the soul, man will come to see that 
the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh. 
The soul calls the light its own ; and feels that the grass 
grows and the stone falls, by a law inferior to, and depen- 
dent on, its nature." 3 "Genius detects through the fly, 
through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, 
the constant individual ; through countless individuals, the 
fixed species; through many species, the genus; through 
all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of 
organized life, the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
cloud, which is always and never the same." 4 "Nature is 
the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One 
is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his 
mind who is conscious of the soul. Its laws are the laws 
of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the meas- 
ure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ig- 
norant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet pos- 
sess." 5 " Build, therefore, your own world. The advan- 
cing spirit shall create its ornaments along its path, and 
carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which 
enchants it." 6 "Man rilled nature with his overflowing 

i Miscellanies p. 62. 2 Essays, Vol. 1., p. 245. 3 Ibid. p. 269. 

* Ibid., p. 12. s Miscellanies, p. 83. 6 Ibid., p. 74. 



294 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

currents ; out from him sprang the sun and moon. The 
laws of his mind, the periods of his action, externized 
themselves into day and night, into the year and the sea- 
sons." 1 "The world is a divine dream, from which we 
may presently awake to the glories and certainties of 
day." 2 

Emerson represents nature as the soul or God yet 
asleep ; God only dreams till he awakes to consciousness 
in the mind of man. Man, however, is not real save as he 
is an inlet of the divine essence. It is not the empirical, 
but the transcendental man ; the absolute cause, not the 
effect, that he means when he says, "A man's genius de- 
termines for him the character of the universe." 3 " Not 
in nature, but in man, is all the beauty and worth he sees. 
The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, 
exalting soul for all its pride. " 4 " Out of the human heart 
go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in 
nature. A man is a. bundle of relations, a knot of roots, 
whose flower and fruitage are the world." 5 " Man carries 
the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry 
suspended in a thought," 6 "Let man, then, learn that 
the sources of nature are in his own mind." 7 " I am pres- 
ent at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a 
geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of 
nature." 8 "Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and 
turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water 

The world to . 

manexter- an d g ;l s. The world is mind precipitated. Man 
crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man im- 

1 Miscellanies, p. 69. 2 Ibid., p. CO. 3 Essays, Vol. I., p. 129. 

« Ibid., p. 132. 5 ibid., p. 32. e ibid., Vol. II., p. 178. 

i Ibid., Vol. I., p. 267. 8 Ibid., p. 314. 



PANTHEISM. 295 

personated." 1 " The great Pan of old, who was clothed 
in leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of things 
and the firmament, — his coat of stars, — was but thee, O 
rich and various man ! thou palace of sight and sound, 
carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the 
unfathomable galaxy; in thy brain the geometry of the 
city of God." 2 

Now let us pause and breathe a moment, and consider 
whereto the author has brought us in these extracts. If 
what he has been saying be true, as we must believe that 
he holds it to be, since he is not a rhetorician, but states 
things precisely as they are to his view, then it is plain 
that all our knowledges and our philosophy need 
to be reconstructed for the most part, whatever \"£nture Se 
may be the case of his own. The old fable of knowledge, 
a man in the moon, pales before this declaration 
that the moon is in every man. And not only this, but. 
the sun and stars, and other very formidable objects, quite 
too numerous to mention, are a part of the original furni- 
ture of the human mind. We do not have to "stretch" 
our minds at all, as good Dr. Watts thought, to take in 
sea and shore ; for all nature is ours before we are born, 
and we carry it about with us eternally in our thoughts, 
knowing it to the same extent that we know ourselves. 
The kingdom of heaven within us is not peace and joy in 
the Holy Ghost, as the Apostles wrote ; it is, literally, the 
firmament and its galaxies, with the earth and other 
planets, and empty regions between, and unmeasured 
spaces beyond. The microcosm contains the macrocosm. 
The universe lives, and moves, and has its being in man, 

i Essays, Vol. II, p. 190. 2 Miscellanies, p. 107. 



296 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

and is the stupendous miracle which he works day by 
day. 

It is but just to call attention here to that form of ideal- 
ism which Emerson holds, in order that his views, as now 
given, may be credited with such rationality as they have. 

He sees no absurdity in the theory of nature 
tiieory°of S j ust presented; for nature is to him not real. 
o^every 18 * ^ e denies tne existence, or at least assumes the 
ideaSfi£. ve non-existence of an objective world. He is an 

idealist, as every consistent pantheist is at last 
forced to be. Pure idealism cannot be other than subjec- 
tive, while it rests on demonstration. "Before the revela- 
tions of the soul," says Emerson, " time, space, and nature 
shrink away." 1 " I have no hostility to nature, but a 
child's love. I expand and live in the warm day, like corn 
and melons. Children, it is true, believe in the external 
world. The belief that it aj)pears only, is an after-thought ; 
but with culture this faith will as surely arise as did the 
other." 2 "Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence 
without, or is only the apocalypse of the mind, it is alike 
useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is 
ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy of my 
senses. A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether 
nature outwardly exists." 3 " PerhajDS these subjective 
lenses have a creative power ; perhaps there are no objects. 
Once we lived in what we saw ; now, the rapaciousness of 
this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, en- 
gages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, — objects, 
successively, tumble in, and are, in their turn, its ideas. 
Nature and literature are subjective phenomena ; every 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 249. 2 Miscellanies, pp. 56, 57. 3 Ibid., pp. 46, 45. 



PANTHEISM. 297 

evil and every good thing is a shadow we cast." x " Let 
us no longer omit our homage to the efficient nature, 
natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms 
flee as the driven snows ; itself secret, its works driven 
before it in flocks and multitudes." 2 Man, whose eye and 
step fate is ever turning outward, — 

" Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 
An image with a glory round its head; 
This shade he worships for its golden hues, 
And makes, not knowing, that which he pursues." 



The pantheism of Emerson, the main features 

teaching 



of which have now been presented, involves 



other doctrines more specific, and entering more 

directly into the daily conduct of life, which are still to be 

considered. 

He teaches, as one legitimate consequence of his philos- 
ophy, the duty of self-reverence. This is not 
vulgar egotism, or self-conceit. In the popular seif-rever- 
sense of the term, no one is less an egotist than 
Emerson. The self, regarded as an effect, a person, is, 
upon his theory, absorbed into the one universal soul which 
fills all things. For the sake of convenience he retains the 
name, but only the name ; meaning, by it, the impersonal 
divinity which rises into consciousness under this fleeting 
form. The reverence enjoined in the Bible involves the 
being of a personal God, and guards sacredly the person- 
ality of the worshipper; but that enjoined by Emerson 
annihilates the worshipper, and leaves, to be worshipped, 
only an impersonal force, besides which there is no reality. 

i Essays, Vol. II., p. 77. 2 ibid., p. 174. 



298 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

TJiis is the underlying doctrine when he tells us that 
" nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own 
mind." 1 " It demands something godlike in him who has 
cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured 
to trust himself for a task-master. High be his heart, 
faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest 
be doctrine, society, law to himself." 2 "A man is the 
word made flesh ; and the moment he acts for himself, 
tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of 
the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere 
him." 3 Since man is wholly a manifestation of the divine 
essence, Emerson admonishes us never to use words of 
self-reproach, but to reverence ourselves at all times. " It 
is the highest power of divine moments," he says, " that 
they abolish our contritions also ; " 4 — words which remind 
us of Spinoza's saying, that " repentance is not a virtue, or 
does not arise from reason, but he who rejDents of any deed 
he has done is twice miserable." 5 "I accuse myself 
of sloth and unprofitableness day by day ; but when these 
waves of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time." 6 
" Let a man know his worth, and keep things under his 
feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 
with the air of an interloper, in the world which exists for 
him." 7 If questioned as to the propriety of reverencing a 
thing, which is neither subject nor object, but the imper- 
sonal essence of both forever acting under fixed laws of 
fate, our author has nothing to say. There is in the self 
the impulse to worship a somewhat which there makes 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 44. 2 ibid., p. 65. 3 Ibid., p. 67. 

* Ibid., p. 287. 5 Ethics, Part IV., Prop. UV. 

e Essays, Vol. I., p. 288. i ibid., p. 54. 



PANTHEISM. 299 

itself known ; and this impulse should be joyfully 
obeyed. 

Emerson urges, as involved in his general 
doctrine, the duty of self-reliance, — still using reliance, 
the term "self" in a transcendental sense. He 
has an entire essay on this duty, the motto of which is, JSTe 
te qucesiveris extra — Seek nothing but yourself. " Trust 
nothing but thyself: great men have always done so, be- 
traying their perception that the absolutely worthy was 
seated at their heart, working through their hands, pre- 
dominating in all their being." 1 " Entire self-reliance 
belongs to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all 
souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance for the 
sea." 2 "Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, 
fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me 
a wart and a wen." 3 " Only by coming again to them- 
selves, or to God in themselves, can men grow forever- 
more." 4 " The true Christianity, a faith like Christ's in 
the infinitude of man, is lost. Once leave your own 
knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take sec- 
ondary knowledge, as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or 
Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God with every 
year." 5 " The reformers summon conventions, and vote 
and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends, will the God 
deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely 
the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign sup- 
port, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong, and to 
prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is 
not a man better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and 

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 41. 2 ibid., p. 312. 3 Miscellanies, p. 127. 

* Ibid., p.. 128. « ibid., p. 140. 



300 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

in the end thou, only firm column, must appear the up- 
holder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that 
power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for 
good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws 
himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, 
works miracles." * " Let us not rove ; let us sit at home 
with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding 
rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple 
declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the 
shoes from off their feet, for God is here within." 2 " Great 
is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower ; 
it never appeals from itself. Before the immense possibili- 
ties of man, all mere experience, all past biography, how- 
ever spotless and sainted, shrinks away." 3 Now this is 
pantheism carried out to the last degree. - It is the being 
and non-being of Hegel put into a didactic form, and made 
to each man the rule of his daily life. The self is nothing, 
and there is nothing but the self; and all is a necessary 
deduction from the postulate that the known God, as 
defined by Hegel and Emerson alike, "is that of which 
everything may be affirmed and everything denied." The 
religion of Christ was self-worship ; and we shall be 
Christs, in the same sense that he was, when we find the 
sum of all that is real and divine where alone it exists for 
us, — within the compass of our own thoughts. 

Another practical deduction, which Emerson finds in his 

subjective pantheism, is the duty of self-assertion. 
This one fact the world hates," says he, "that 

the soul becomes / for that forever degrades the 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 78. 2 Ibid., p. 62. » ibid., p. 268. 



Self-asser- 
tion. 



PANTHEISM. 301 

past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to shame, 
confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Judas and Jesus 
equally aside." l Here, as we perceive, the " becoming " 
of Hegel's logic is made the basis of a rule for our every- 
day life. Self-assertion, by which we understand forward- 
ness, aspiring, pushing for place, personal ambition, self- 
consciousness, a bustling sense of one's own importance, 
and the like, our author regards as God coming out of 
non-being into being ; and therefore the more of it we 
have, the more will God be manifested. And the sinner 
should be just as earnest as the saint, in this becoming ; 
for God is the essence of them both. Emerson admits 
that this doctrine, if carried out in all its consequences, 
legitimates the social chaos of Goethe, and the political 
lawlessness of Carlyle. Yet he offers no other creed, 
while he urges this upon every man. " I appeal from your 
customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any 
longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, 
we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek 
to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes 
or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is 
holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon 
whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints." 2 
" A man may have that allowance he takes. Take the 
place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acqui- 
esce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, 
with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or 
driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly 
accept your measure of your doing and being, whether 
you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you 
see your work produced to the concave sphere of the 

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 61. 2 Ibid., p. 64. 



302 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

heavens, one with the revolution of the stars." 1 " Speak 
your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; 
for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and 
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 
of the last judgment." 2 

Still another injunction, which Emerson finds in his 
general doctrine, and which he lays on us all, is that which 
bids us seek the law of our duty within. All trustworthy 
rules for the conduct of life are of subjective origin ; and 
they alone are the standard by which to judge those pre- 
tending to come from any outward source. If this in- 
ward law were simply the voice of conscience, 

The moral l J ' 

law wholly that higher law of our moral nature bv which 

subjective. ° , ^ 

Christ teaches us to regulate our practice, it 
would be well. But it is far other than that. It is the 
total tendency of the man, the resultant of all his en- 
ergies in free exercise. The moral imperative is no more 
sacred to him whose ethical nature predominates, than the 
animal imperative to him whose appetites predominate. 
"No law can be sacred to me," says our author, " but that 
of my own nature. If I am the devil's child, I will live 
from the devil. Good and bad are names very readily 
transferable to this or that ; the only right is what is after 
my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A 
man is to carry himself, in the presence of all opposition, 
as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he." 5 " It 
is of no use to preach to me from without. If a man do 
not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with 
that it tells of, let him lowly confess it." 4 " What your 
heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is al- 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 136. * Ibid., p. 39. s Ibid., p. 44. * Ibid., p. 261. 



PANTHEISM. 303 

ways right." * " No love can be bound by oath or cov- 
enant to secure it against a higher 'love. No truth so sub- 
lime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new 
thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they 
are unsettled is there any hope of them." 2 Our author 
admits that the law thus enunciated confounds all estab- 
lished notions of social order, but he retracts nothing. 
" The bold sensualist," he says, " will use the name of phi- 
losophy to gild his crimes, but the law of consciousness 
abides." 3 "One man thinks justice consists in paying 
debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another 
who is very remiss in this, and makes the creditor wait 
tediously. But that second man has his own way of look- 
ing at things." 4 Let each obey his tendency, is Emerson's 
admonition to them both, and in neither case shall any 
real injustice be done, but the highest ethical perfection 
be indifferently attained by the two diverse courses of 
action. He proceeds in a similar strain, seeming to feel 
the dangerous nature of the ground he is on, yet pressing 
boldly forward, in the line of his fundamental theory : " I 
hear some reader say, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrho- 
nism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and 
would fain teach us that our crimes may be lively stones, 
out of which we shall construct the temple of the true 
God! I am not careful to justify myself. I own that I 
am gladdened by seeing that unrestrained inundation of 
the principle of good into every chink and hole that self- 
ishness has left open, yea, into selfishness itself; so that 
no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfac- 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 130. 2 ibid., p. 290. 

3 Ibid., p. 65. < Ibid., pp. 286, 287. 



304 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

tions." x The ultimate fate of the wicked, that is, will be 
a source of blessedness to them, as truly as the destiny of 
the righteous will make them forever content. Judas, in 
going to his own place, went to a place which satisfied 
him, no less than the Lord of glory himself. The con- 
clusion is certainly somewkat startling, yet it grows logi- 
cally out of the Emersonian philosophy. The optimism 
of that philosophy is all-encompassing, absolute. To 
whatever any being, angel or devil, is brought by the 
largest outcome of all that is in him, it cannot but be to 
him a state of perfect blessedness. It may be called 
"perdition, and by many other -hard names; and "the 
Book " may paint its terrors in blackness and fire ; never- 
theless, it is not an evil, but a good, and, to those who 
bravely meet it, full of " extreme satisfactions." 2 The 
words which exhort us to make to ourselves friends who 
shall receive us when our earthly tabernacles fail, is here 
broadened into a precept which confounds holiness and 
sin ; which makes it a matter of indifference whether we 
choose this or that alternative, so long as we are in the 
path to which the "emphasis" of our nature impels us. 

Another duty involved in the pantheistic creed of Em- 
erson, and which he does not omit to press, is that of self- 
isolation. All true life rests at last on a basis of pure 

individualism. Intercourse with men, and devo- 
Eohftiou self ti° n t° mere affairs, render us forgetful of that 

in which all true greatness consists. The secret 
doors, by which the soul of all things comes into us, are 

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 288. 

2 For a fine statement and criticism of this view of evil, see Muller's Chris- 
tian Doctrine of Sin, Book II., chap. IV. 



PANTHEISM. 305 

not kept open. We no longer feel the charm of the eter- 
nal; but its spell is broken, and we fall away into the 
temporal. We cease to be, and only seem. From all 
this seeming we must withdraw ourselves, and retire into 
the solitude of our own thoughts. Thus alone is it that 
we feel the impulses of the universal soul ; as the rivers, 
by pouring themselves into the sea, are filled out of its 
depths through all their courses. " If a man would know 
what the great God speaketh," our author says, " he must 
'go into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God 
will not make himself manifest to cowards. One must 
greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the 
accents of other men's devotion. Even their prayers are 
hurtful to him, until he have made his own. He that finds 
God a sweet enveloping thought, never counts his com- 
pany. When I sit in that presence who shall dare to 
come in ? " 1 " The poor mind does not seem to 
itself to be anything, unless it have an outward ^JtSbsorbeS 
badge ; some wild contrasting action, to testify blessedness. 
that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the 
sun and sleeps, and is nature." 2 He whose mind is in a 
perpetual doze, and all whose life comes nearest to the 
idea of natural vegetation, is, according to this language, 
the man blessed with the largest measure of intellectual 
wealth. Contentment with idle reverie is the characteris- 
tic of genius ; and they are greatest whose blessedness 
consists with doing nothing. 

Urging this duty of self-isolation, and entire satisfaction 
with one's inward life, Emerson says, "I like the silent 
church before the service begins better than any preaching. 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 268. 2 ibid., p. 146. 

20 



306 HALF TKUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt 

each one with a precinct or sanctuary. So let us always 

sit." 1 "Let us not be too much acquainted. 

" Men de- . ' , . 

scend to We should meet each morning as from foreign 

meet." # & b 

countries, and, spending the day together, should 
depart at night as into foreign countries." 2 "Men de- 
scend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to 
the world, for which they forsake their native nobleness, 
they resemble those Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean 
houses, ami affect an extreme poverty, to escape the ra- 
pacity of the Pacha, and reserve all their display of 
wealth for their interior and guarded retirements." 3 
Now this solitary and lofty self-sufficiency, which is a duty 
if pantheism be true, certainly ought not to claim any 
affinity with the spirit of Him who went about doing good, 
teaching us that only as we humble ourselves are we 
exalted, and that we must "wash one another's feet" if 
we would be great in his kingdom. " Your isolation must 
not be mechanical, but spiritual ; that is, must be eleva- 
tion. At times the world seems to be in conspiracy to 
importune you with important trifles. Friend, client, 
child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at the gate of 
the closet door, and say, ' Come out to us.' But keep thy 
state; come not into their confusion." 4 And this man is 

an oracle to not a few philanthropists of to-day. 
Misanthro- j) Q th ose w \ i0 re gard him as a safe guide in 

ways of loving service to mankind really appre- 
hend the spirit of his writings ? Undoubtedly there are 
those who imagine themselves in sympathy with his views, 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 63. 2 ibid., Vol. II., p. 135. • 

s Ibid., Vol. I., p. 253. « Ibid., p. 63. 



PANTHEISM. 307 

while they are dealing their bread to the hungry, and 
striving to break every yoke. Yet nothing can be clearer, 
in the light of the words now quoted, than that the path 
which they follow is not his, but "the more excellent 
way " in their own hearts. They do good despite of his 
teachings. They are not swerved from their loving-heart- 
edness and charity, though charmed by the sweet-voiced 
dream. Their protection against the unloving tone of 
much that Emerson has written consists partly in the fact 
that they are too good to comprehend it, and partly in the 
fact that his own practice gives the lie to his theory. 

It is a little surprising that Emerson, after putting so 
low an estimate as he does on the Christian Scriptures, 
should endeavor to show that they accord, in some of 
their teachings, with his doctrine. Why should 

to J Attitude 

he claim the indorsement of a volume whose towards the 

Bible and 

authority he has disowned ? Seeing how man- Christian- 

° ity. 

ifestly the Bible is against him in its whole 

drift, he seems to me to wrest its free language in a quite 
extraordinary way. He broadly intimates that the account 
of the fall of man, in the first chapter of Genesis, is sim- 
ply an exposition of his theory, as held by Moses, or who- 
ever wrote the book ; that it is an allegory, picturing to 
us the human family, who in the main have ceased to 
commune with the great spirit of nature revealed in them, 
and are living in that objective world which he regards as 
unreal. 1 " Christianity," lie says, " is rightly dear to the 
best of mankind ; yet was there never a young philoso- 
pher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, 

1 Essays, Vol. II., p. 174. 



308 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially 
prized: 'Then shall also the Son be subject unto him who 
pot all things under him, that God may be all in all.' 
Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great 
and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward 
to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself 
against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word 
out of the book itself." 1 "The dogmatism of bigots " is 
a rather tart phrase for so amiable a writer as Emerson to 
apply to those whose only bigotry is, that they do not 
with him find pantheism, but monotheism in the writings 
of the apostles. But let the harsh utterance stand. Our 
author has read the story of the Pilgrim Pathers. " What 
a debt is ours," he says, " to that old religion which, in the 
childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a Sabbath morn- 
ing in the country of New England, teaching privation, 
self-denial and sorrow ! A man was born not for prosper- 
ity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble 
rock-maple which, all around our villages, bleeds for the 
service of man." 2 When Emerson has found, in all the 
pantheism of the ages, any such flowering as this into 
holy and sacrificial lives, it will be time for him to charac- 
terize an earnest Christian faith as "the dogmatism of 
bigots," and to quote the words of the Son of God as 
confirming his own speculative views. " Jesus Christ," he 
says, " belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw 

with open eye the mystery of the soul. One 
timt"chris S t man was true to what is in you and me. He 
Eist. pan sa id> in this jubilee of divine emotion, 'I am 

divine. Through me, God acts; through me, 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 284. 2 Miscellanies, p. 211. 



PANTHEISM. 309 

speaks. Would you see God, see me ; or, see thee, when 
thou also thinkest as I now think.'" 1 To the view of 
Emers"on, therefore, Christ is not an exceptional person 
among men. He is one of a class ; those, namely, who 
have lived and spoken from the soul which dwells con- 
sciously in us all. " When the gods come among men, 
they are not known. Jesus was not ; Socrates and Shake- 
speare were not." 2 But this classification will not stand. 
For no exegesis can make out the religion of Christ to be 
only self-worship, or the God of the Christian Scriptures 
to be the same as that of Emerson and Spinoza. We 
have seen, in noticing Emerson's attitude towards all re- 
forms and charities, to what opposite results the doctrine 
of Christ and that of the pantheist logically come. The 
God whose will Christ came to do is a Father, with the 
father's heart of pity and tenderness towards all his chil- 
dren ; the God whom the pantheist would set up in his 
place, and persuade us to worship, is an eternal fate, which 
devours all things up. Emerson says, Believe in the god 
within yourself, and you shall live ; Christ says, 

■y-rr . . . Spirit of 

Whosoever believeth in me shall never die. the two 

contrasted. 

Emerson says, Obey your own tendency and you 
shall be led into all truth ; Christ says, I am the way, and 
the truth, and the life. Emerson says, Accept my specula- 
tion and it shall unsettle you in all things ; Christ says, 
Take my yoke upon you and ye shall find rest to your soul. 
But some one may accuse me of injustice in represent- 
ing that the spirit of Emerson's doctrine is just the oppo- 
site of the spirit of Christ ; that he would unsettle and 
bewilder us, rather than lead us in a plain path, where our 

i Miscellanies, p. 125. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 28. 



310 ITx\LF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Emerson souls shall be at peace. Yet here are his words, 
7etue"u Ml J justifying all that I have said : " Lest I 
things. should mislead any when I have my head and 

obey my own whims, let me remind the reader that I am 
only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what 
I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pre- 
tended to settle anything true or false. I unsettle all 
things. No facts to me are sacred ; none are profane ; I 
simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my 
back." 1 Unlike Him who declared that he was the light 
of the world, Emerson here announces that he is a planet 
yet uncertain of its own orbit, and which rushes on, in 
obedience to an inward impulse, regardless alike of the 
past and the future. 

It may seem to some that I misrepresent Emerson, in 

saying that he is not a philanthropist, but, so 
th°rop/i!t. n f ar as consistent with his theory, a despiser of 

all acts of charity and beneficence among men. 
His own language shall decide whether I have misrepre- 
sented him or not. u I tell thee, thou foolish philanthro- 
pist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to 
such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not 
Delong. Your miscellaneous popular charities ; the educa- 
tion at college of fools ; the building of meeting-houses to 
the vain end to which many now stand ; alms to sots ; 
and the thousandfold relief societies ; though I confess 
with shame I sometimes succumb, and give the dollar, it 
is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the 
manhood to withhold." 2 As if these words were not 
enough, he again says, in one of his later works, " Leave 

i Essays, Vol. I., p. 289. 2 ibid., pp. 45, 46. 



PANTHEISM. 311 

this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are 
rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and in- 
fluence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. 
I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, 
drill, divide and break them up, and draw individuals out 
of them. The worst of charity is, that the lives you are 
asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses ! 
the calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at 
all, but honest men only ; lovely, sweet, accom- 
plished women only; no shovel-handed, narrow- the masses, 
brained, gin-drinking, million stockingers or laz- 
zaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to 
see it check, not multiply the population. When it 
reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will 
be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, 
and let us have the considerate vote of single men, spoken 
on their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt it was 
established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned 
equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under- 
estimated." * Certainly, this burst of misanthropy almost 
rivals Carlyle. It is as undemocratic as the most violent 
aristocrat could desire. It savors not of philanthropy, but 
of that spirit of caste which would do a Brahman's heart 
good. It is, in fact, whether consciously or not to the 
author, a passionate rendering of Spinoza's language, 
where he says, as one of the inferences from his panthe- 
istic system, " The man who lives by reason endeavors as 
much as possible not to be touched by pity or com- 
passion." 2 

In asserting, as I have, that Emerson confounds the 

i Conduct of Life, pp. 218, 219. 2 Ethics, Pt. IV., Prop. L., Coroll. 



312 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

No moral Da d with the good in morals, and sees only 
istmctions. ^ e same kind of sacredness in men as in the 
meanest animals, it may be said that I wrong him. But 
his own words shall judge between us. " I talked to- 
day with a pair of philosophers : I endeavored to show 
my good men that I love everything by turns, and 
nothing long ; that I loved the centre, but doted on the 
superficies ; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice 
and rats ; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the 
old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard ; that I 
was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not 
live in their arms." * The same soul of nature, that is, 
which gives understanding to men, reveals itself in the 
small burrowing creatures ; paganism is as good as Chris- 
tianity while earnestly cultivated ; the warrior who deso- 
lates a continent, may claim the same homage as the 
enlightener of a nation. A Caesar and a Paul are alike 
noble, as judged by that philosophy which sees God in all 
action ; but Emerson himself, whom this nobility fills 
with joy, is greater than all, and disdains familiar inter- 
course with that which he so admires, since the most 
sacred revelations of God cannot be from without, but aft 
always from within. 

Now a stranger, who should visit .Emerson after can- 
vassing the views which I have given, would expect to find 
him the veriest wild creature that was ever caged. . But 
how agreeable, how exhilarating the surprise ! 

Emerson 

better than He is the kindest, gentlest, simplest of men. 

his theory. ' ° ' L 

These bad and hard utterances are not charac- 
teristic of him. They belong to the system he has em- 

i Essays, Vol. II., p. 239. 



PANTHEISM. 313 

braced, as he is forced to see ; but the Xew England blood 
in him is too pure to welcome them. He for the most part 
avoids that side of pantheism which looks towards lawless- 
ness and vice, and keeps rather to its spiritual side, which 
permits him to discourse so like a Christian mystic, if not 
in the exact language of Christianity. In nearly all his 
utterances he is benevolent, and true to our love of the 
beautiful and just in morals, owing to this great inconsis- 
tency. His practice is not in agreement with his theory, 
and therefore the two do not walk together. That theory, 
whose realized ultimate would be a social chaos, does not 
destroy in him a certain high-toned virtue, bred in the 
ancestral stock, which makes him the friend of order, of 
domestic purity, and of every grace of character that 
adorns either public or private life. Possibly some of 
those who feel the greatest repugnance to Emerson's doc- 
trine, and who believe in a personal God, and one Master, 
even Christ, are quite as inconsistent with their creed as 
he, — and that, too, far less to their credit, since they are 
made worse by that which makes him better. It is not 
honorable to men to disregard in practice a wise system 
of faith, but in view of Emerson's faith we cer- 

. , i • -i n • a n i Inconsis- 

tamly esteem him the more for saying, " A tool- tency rec- 
ommended, 
ish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, 

adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 

With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." 1 

When Spinoza's landlady came to him, asking him to teach 

her his doctrine, he advised her to be content with the 

Christian faith, in which she had been bred up. And 

Emerson, as though valuing a spirit of sincere piety more 

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 50. 



314 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

than his own speculations, says to his disciples, " In your 
metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity ; yet 
when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them 
heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape 
and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the 
hand of the harlot, and flee." 1 Certainly we are inclined 
to judge in the most favorable light possible one who thus 
insists on right action whatever may become of theory ; 
but it is the theory, and not the man, with which we have 
been especially concerned in this inquiry ; nor do we grant 
that it is indifferent what a man's speculative views may 
be, if he tries to make his practice right, since in the great 

majority of cases the speculative views do, 
man forced sooner or later, determine the practice. Hy- 
hypocrite. pocrisy is never to be encouraged, even where 

it makes men seem better than their honest con- 
victions. We naturally carry our creeds out into our lives. 
This is the tendency, and it must ultimately prevail, as 
external hinderances, and the restraints of education and 
birth, are taken away. While gladly recognizing all the 
virtues to which our author may lay claim, and admitting 
that it is not hypocrisy, but goodness of nature, which 
makes his life so much more pleasing than his creed, I still 
insist that no word, in which I have set forth the spirit and 
drift of his teachings, should be taken back, or qualified, 
or in* any respect explained away. He does not lay a 
foundation for society, for government, or for personal 
development such as our circumstances, and our knowledge 
of what we are, demand. Our own self, looked at from 
the transcendental point of view, and including all its 

1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 50. 



PANTHEISM. 315 

weaknesses and exposures to evil, is the only sacred thing. 
This we are to worship ; for this we are tp live ; in this 
are the springs and the law of all that is, or was, or ever 
shall be. 

Upon rising from this examination, the same question 

confronts us as when we rose from the examination of 

« 

Spinoza. Are the conclusions which Emerson has reached, 
both as to the substance of truth and the conduct of life, 
a warning to us to beware of the a-priori philosophy? 
Not by any means. The danger of the great mass of 
mankind has always lain just the other way. 

iiir>i it -ii Transcen- 

Ihe popular thought ol the world ever looks dentaiism 

n • -i /•• not to be 

outward and down, - — away from ideas to facts, judged by 

Emerson. 

from spirit to matter, from the kingdom of God 
to questions of food, raiment, shelter, temporal thrift. 
That thought would be far nobler, and fin* more ennobling, 
if it could be trained to a steady love of those truths 
which transcend the sphere of the senses, and which we 
reach only as the inner doors of the soul are open to our 
consciousness. We may count here and there one, among 
trahscendentalists, who, though a star of the first magnitude, 
has wandered out of the orbit of truth, and become lost in 
the blackness of darkness. Yet we are at the same time 
permitted to look on a host of others, of the same school of 
thought, whom no such fate has overtaken. They are the 
brightest names in the Christian church, and in that litera- 
ture which never grows old, shining forth in calm splendor 
on the ages God would lead and enlighten. All these 
safely travelled the high circuit which Emerson too self- 
reliantly essayed, held to their* course, as he was not, 
by that central Luminary which is the light and the life of 



316 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

men. If the flight proved too hard for him, 

Christ the & r ' 

grand safe- and we must sorrowfully own that he fell like the 

guard. ^ 

son of the morning, yet his overthrow cannot be 
imputed to the form of philosophy which he held in com- 
mon with them. They have not been shaken, though 
members of the same starry host to which he belonged. 
They have kept their first estate. No shock has been able 
to hurl them from their sphere. They shine on with un- 
diminished lustre, and as the brightness of the firmament, 
trusting not to that force which is in themselves, but to 
Him who holdeth the stars in his right hand. 



LECTURE VIII. 

Theism with a Pantheistic Drift. 

It would be a serious defect, in any account of modern 
free-thought, to omit the speculations of Theo- 
dore Parker. Perhaps the name of no religious porker.™ 
theorist of the last generation is more widely 
known. To the public generally, however, he is known 
more as an earnest political reformer, and bitter opponent 
of the existing institutions of Christianity, than as the 
teacher of a positive system of religious belief. But he 
had elaborated such a system, even before he emerged 
from the comparative obscurity of his early manhood ; a 
system which he claimed as peculiarly his own, and which 
he professed to hold unchanged to the very close of his 
life. And if I should not succeed in trying to make clear 
just what his views and position were, I shall hope at least 
to preserve a spirit of candor and calm inquiry, such as I 
have often failed to discover in him. 

Parker always felt it a hardship, as his friends 

J i Disliked to 

still feel it to be, that he was classed with infi- be called 

an infidel. 

dels by the popular verdict. Yet it is rather to 
the odium associated with the word " infidel," than to the 
doctrine which that word marks, that objection has been 
made. I do not now use it for the sake of the odium, but 

317 



318 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

as a descriptive term, which, however abused, has a well- 
defined meaning. If the word " infidel " were an honorable 
term, having lost its odium as the once odious word 
" Christian " has, I would use it all the same. Those who 
refuse to call Christ their master, or who, after having 
once bowed to his authority, turn from him to trust in 
something else as the final arbiter, are at liberty to make 
their action as honorable to themselves as they can. They 
are not charged with absolute infidelity, but only with infi- 
delity to Christ the Lord. The term is accurately em- 
ployed. It describes just what they have done. They 
should glory in it, as some try to do, if there be a religious 
authority for them superior to that of Christ. 

Let us then, in the first place, see the proof 

Did not bow ._ . -" . . . 

to Christ as that barker did not own the authority of Christ 
the final au- . . ; 

thoritym as supreme m matters of religious faith ; the 

religion. ■ 

' proof that he revolted from under that authority, 
and set up for himself another religious oracle. This evi- 
dence will not be hard to find. It is so abounding, and so 
acknowledged by both himself and his friends, that I may 
be thought to do a superfluous work in adducing it. But 
we must go step by step ; taking the first for the sake of 
the second, if indeed for no other reason. 

In his chapter on the "limitations of Jesus," Parker 
s'ays, "It is apparent that Jesus shared the 
jesus\vas at erroneous notions of the times respecting devils, 
In erro^ou possessions, and demonology in general ; respect- 
ToctJ. bU " ing the character of God, and the eternal pun- 
ishment he prepares for the devil and his angels, 
and for a large part of mankind. If we may credit the 



PANTHEISM. 319 

most trustworthy of the Gospels, he was profoundly in 
error on these important points, whereon absurd doctrines 
have still a most pernicious influence in Christendom. But 
it would be too much to expect a man ' about thirty years 
of age ' in Palestine, in the first century, to have outgrown 
what is still the doctrine of learned ministers all over the 
Christian world. He was mistaken in the interpretation 
of the Old Testament, if we may take the word of the 
Gospels. But if he supposed that the writers of the 
Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the prophecies spoke of him ; 
if he applied their poetic figures to himself, it is yet but a 
trifling mistake, affecting a man's head, not his heart. It 
is no more necessary for Jesus than for Luther to under- 
stand all ancient literature, and be familiar with criticism 
and antiquities ; though with men who think religion rests 
on his infallibility, it must indeed be a very hard case for 
their belief in Christianity." 1 Now, in this extract it is 
noticeable, that Parker accepts the orthodox exegesis 
respecting future punishment, a personal devil, and Messi- 
anic prophecies ; that he rejects the exegesis which prevails, 
on those topics, among Unitarians and Universalists. He 
also expresses a doubt as to the claim of the New Testa- 
ment, not merely to divine authority, or special inspiration, 
but to the trustworthiness of ordinary history. And he 
very graciously apologizes for the errors of Jesus, attribut- 
ing them to youthful enthusiasm, inexperience, and limited 
advantages for culture. But the point to be especially 
noticed is, that he finds no element of authority in Christ 
as a religious teacher ; he has a feeling of pity for all, of 
whatever shade of belief, who hold to the infallibility of 

1 Discourse of Religion (Little & Brown, Boston, 1856), pp. 276,277. 



320 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Jesus. He says in another place, speaking of 

Calls Christ , A - , , A „ , .-.',, 

and the modern theology, it " has two great idols, the 
Bible and Christ." 1 
The Unitarian body is denounced by Parker for still rec- 
ognizing the authority of the Son of God. That party, 
he says, " differs theoretically from the orthodox party in 
exegesis, and that alone ; like that, is ready to believe any- 
thing which has a thus-saith-the-Lord before it ; 
Unitarians its Christianity rests on the authority of Jesus: 

denounced J J ' 

So- them tnat on ^ e authority of his miracles; and his 
miracles on the testimony of the Evangelists. 
The old landmarks must not be passed by, nor the Bible 
questioned as to its right to be master of the soul. Chris- 
tianity must be rested on the authority of Christ." 2 Such, 
he alleges, is the doctrine of conservative Unitarians ; and 
from it he earnestly dissents, as being " too narrow for the 
soul." The fact that Christ claims this authority he does 
not deny, but considers it one of the mistakes into which 
Christ's enthusiasm led him. 

Parker more usually calls his own system or speculation 

the Absolute Religion, though not always. In one place, 

distinguishing it from the prevailing theology, he calls it 

spiritualism ; and says it teaches that " God is immanent 

in spirit and in space." Here we have, at the 

Wl\at Par- 

kerism finds very threshold, a statement which is strictly pan- 
in Christ, .... ~ „. . . . ,. , 

theistic in form. This spiritualism, the author 

goes on to say, " believes that God is near the soul ; hears 

him in all true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician ; stoops at 

the same fountain as Moses or Jesus. It sees in Jesus a 

man living man-like, highly gifted, though not without 

i Discourse of Religion, p. 453. 2 Ibid., p. 439. 



PANTHEISM. 321 

errors. He lived for himself; died for himself; worked 
out his own salvation, and we must do the same, for one 
man cannot live for another more than he can eat and 
sleep for another. The divine incarnation is in all man- 
kind." 1 So high is the throne of judgment on which 
Parker seats himself. Nor is it easy to see how the state- 
ment, that all mankind are the incarnation of God, differs 
from the most distinctive utterances of Spinozism. But 
waiving this point for the j)resent, and still tracing the 
plain marks Parker has left of his estimate of Jesus, we 
find him saying, in an account of his early experiences, " I 
had no belief in the plenary, infallible, verbal inspiration 
of the whole Bible, and strong doubts as to the miraculous 
inspiration of any part of it. I could not put my finger on 
any great moral or religious truth taught by revelation in 
the New Testament, which had not previously been set forth 
by men for whom no miraculous help was ever claimed." 2 
Of the Old Testament Parker says, " The legendary 
and mythological writings of the Hebrews have 
no more authority than the similar narratives of The oid 

Testament 

the Phoenicians, the Persians, and the Chinese." 3 long- since 

outgrown. 

He thinks that many things in those ancient 
writings were relatively true, and of use, to the people to 
whom they were spoken. But humanity, which is ever 
moving forward in religious ideas as in other matters, has 
long since outgrown them, and left them, as cast-off gar- 
ments, far behind on its path. "Hebraism, Heathenism, 
Christianism are places where man halted in his march 
towards the promised land, encampments on his pilgrimage. 

i Discourse of Religion, pp. 444, 449. 

2 Experience as a Minister (Boston, 1859), p. 37. 

3 Discourse of Religion, p. 111. 

21 



322 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

He rests a while ; then God says to him, Long enough hast 
thou compassed this mountain ; turn and take thy journey 
forward. Lo ! the land of promise is still before thee." 1 
As to the nature of this religious progress, our author does 
not leave us in doubt. It is an endless "becoming," a con- 
tinuous unfolding of the absolute religion in new and 
better forms. It delivers evermore from the power of the 
past, and from all authority external to the soul itself. 
The present emphasis of each man's religious conscious- 
ness is his guide for the time being. In that he learns to 
trust, and to reject every other oracle, as he grows truly 
wise concerning his own faculties and destiny. "There 
must be a better form of religion," he says. " It must be 
free, and welcome the highest, the proudest, and the wid- 
est thought." 2 Whoever seeks this nobler form " bows to 
no idols, neither mammon, nor the church, nor the Bible, 
nor yet Jesus. Its redeemer is within, its salvation, and 
its heaven and oracle of God." 3 " Protestantism delivers 
us from the tyranny of the church, and carries us back to 
the Bible. Biblical criticism frees us from the 
rcHgjous° f thraldom of the Scriptures, and brings us to the 
progress authority of Jesus. Philosophical spiritualism 
liberates us from all personal and finite authority, and re- 
stores us to God, the primeval fountain." 4 Not only, 
therefore, is the true God impersonal, according to Parker, 
but the gospel of Christ, and all the forms of Christianity, 
are each a despotism, whose sway the human soul rejects, 
upon coming to a clear knowledge of its own inherent na- 
ture. 

J Sermons of Theism (Boston, Little & Brown, 1856), Introd., p. 74. 

2 Ibid., p. 72. a Discourse of Religion, p. 446. * Ibid., p. 449. 



PANTHEISM. 323 

Having seen what Parker denies on religious 

, . , , , t , , . The posi- 

subjects, let us, in the second place, see what he tive side of 

,. n , T -tit Ti Parkerism. 

undertakes to artirm. 1 have said that he calls 
his doctrine the Absolute Religion, Spiritualism, or Philo- 
sophical Spiritualism. The first of these designations is 
that by which his more distinctive views are best known. 
In some of his later writings, however, the 
word " theism " seems to be preferred ; and he tSsfgnate 
strongly insists that the speeulation thus named 
is something quite other than deism, pantheism, or athe- 
ism. Indeed, he labors so hard and often to make out this 
distinction, that we suspect it was not clear to the minds 
of his friends, even if he himself had no doubt of its reality. 
The terms he chose by which to designate his views 
show that he was ambitious of originality, though the 
views themselves are in almost no sense original. It is in 
forms of expression, not in essence of doctrine, 
that he is unlike some of those from whom he SSnai* 88 
claims to differ. He was unwilling to call any supposed, 
one master, even while freely appropriating the 
opinions of others. Whether he really believed himself 
to be the founder of a new religion or not, that was evi- 
dently the high character and office to which he aspired, 
and which he labored all his life long to show that he had 
attained. But it will appear, I think, that he was not as 
successful as he thought himself to be ; that in large part, 
unconsciously perhaps, he was' a disciple of other men ; 
that even where he most stoutly asserts his independence 
and originality, he is not the central sun, but rather a sec- 
ondary orb, in the system to which he belongs. I shall 
hope to give an intelligible, though condensed statement 



324 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

of what Parker calls his Theism, without taking up very 
much space. 

The elements which he places at the bottom 
Three fac- f t ne Absolute Religion, and which he traces 

tors of Ab- ° ' 

oion te Eeli through all its multitudinous forms, are three in 
number : the Sentiment, the Idea, the Concep- 
tion. There is in all men a feeling of dependence : this is the 
religious sentiment. But the feeling of depen- 
ment Sentl dence involves, or is necessarily connected with, 
an intuition of something on which the depen- 
dence rests: that objective something is God, and consti- 
tutes the religious idea. And this idea, as it is 

The Idea. . ° 

variously apprehended, limited, and defined, 
The Con- becomes the religious conception. Of these 

ception. . 

three elements, the nrst two, the sentiment and 
the idea, are universal. They are also unvarying in, 
their nature, being a part of the essential furniture of 
the human mind. Not so, however, the third element. 
This is the form under which the idea is apprehended. 
It belongs to the comprehending feculty, and diners 
with the differing capacities, idiosyncrasies, and culture 

of men. The conception of God in the mind of 
tion alone a New Zealander, for instance, differs vastly 

vftrios 

from that in the mind of an educated English- 
man; but the sentiment and idea are in both cases the 
same. These three factors, then, constantly working to- 
gether everywhere, make the Absolute Religion. This is 
all the religion there is in the world, or ever was, or will 
be. .Judaism, Paganism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, 
are but the transient forms of this permanent essence. 
All religions are substantially one and the same. But 



PANTHEISM. 325 

they differ endlessly in form, owing to the variable term, 
the conception of God. This is purely subjective, and 
determined, in each individual case, by inherent 
but constantly changing peculiarities. The reli- SiSns! 
gious conception has been in a state of progres- 
sive development from the beginning. It has not yet 
reached its perfect maturity, however near to perfection 
some marvellously gifted soul, here or there, may per- 
chance have come. Man is a steadily progressive being 
in religion, as in all the other elements of his nature. 
This progress the author thinks he has traced in the his- 
tories of the various families of men : not traced it as 
thoroughly as he could desire, since the data are wanting, 
but sufficiently to persuade him that his main position is 
correct. He would be glad of certain facts which he does 
not find, — just as the extreme Darwinists would be, in 
proving their doctrine of the origin of species. 

Tliiiir sue- 

But the large mass of facts which he does find cession 

traced. 

seem to him to make the unfound so probable, 
that he assumes their existence; and he announces the 
conclusion to which he comes from such a premise with an 
air of scientific certainty. Man's original conception of 
God was in the form of Fetichism. Then, as he emerged 
from barbarism, and became somewhat civilized, that con- 
ception rose to the form of Polytheism, or even to some 
of the ruder forms of Pantheism. Then, as governments 
were set up, and nations became rivals of each other, this 
conception took the shape of a belief in national gods. 
Hence the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians, the Indian 
Brahma and Gaudama; the Greek, and the Roman pan- 
theon, the Scandinavian Thor, the Persian Ormuzd, the 



326 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TBUTH. 

Phoenician Baal. The Jehovah, of whom we read in the 
Old Testament, was but the national god of the Hebrews ; 
an. imperfect god, as were those worshipped by the other 
nations ; one who loved the Jews, and who was bent on 
making them the supreme political power among men. 
But this exclusive national spirit gave way somewhat 
before the conquests of the Roman empire. A new polit- 
ical era dawned, in which peoples hitherto at strife were 
brought under a single government. This new state of 
things led the way to the Christian conception of God ; 
a conception larger and nobler than any which had pre- 
ceded it, but still imperfect, since even the God of Chris- 
tianity is a partial being, whose purpose it is to save a 
part of the human race, and to eternally torture all the 
others. Plainly, then, the perfect conception is 

Parkerism . n .•,,«. 

to be su- not yet reached. Jrarkensm, as judged m its 

perseded. * . 

own light, must soon perish. It is the duty of 
all men to struggle for something better yet in store for 
them. Forgetting the venerable past, and disentangling 
themselves from the present, they should keep their con- 
ception, ever enlarging, that it may accord with the grow- 
ing science, thought, and philanthropy of the world. This 
doctrine of an endless progress, as all must see, destroys 
the basis of the author's whole system. For by what 
right can he claim to speak of an absolute religion, while 
holding that the very faculties and powers on which man 
is dependent for all his religious views, are in a constant 
process of change? That which seems absolute to-day 
will be seen to be relative to-morrow, if his theory be true. 
Only a weary eternity of escape from one falsehood to 
another is before us. If there can be no absolutely perfect 



PANTHEISM. 327 

revelation of God to us out of a supernatural sphere, but 
we can know him only under those forms of our own 
minds which we are daily outgrowing, the word truth is 
eternally without a fixed meaning ; and whatever we may 
now happen to believe concerning God and our obligations 
to him, we are sure to reach a point in the future where 
we shall see that we believed a lie. 

There are particular statements in the author's exposi- 
tion of his theory, with which we might not disagree. 
Much that he says respecting the religious sentiment, the 
idea, and the conception in the unaided mind, is, no doubt, 
true, notwithstanding the suicidal spirit of his scheme as 
a whole. And besides this fatal feature, even 



the partial truths which he utters, rest on a the- 



Parker's 
theory of 
religious 

ory of progress which the settled facts of his- STeTby 
tory flatly contradict. Those facts were given Jstoi r- 
in a previous lecture. 1 Scientific researches have shown 
that monotheism existed in the world — in Egypt, China, 
and elsewhere — before the ages of idolatrous worship. 
Feticbism is not the most ancient religion of which we 
have historic record. Archaeology proves that a better 
religion than polytheism preceded polytheism. And the 
verdict of history is not that there was steady progress, 
but fearful degeneracy, in man's forms of worship and 
conceptions of God. There is a solid basis, which no 
plausible theory can disturb, for our belief that man was, 
at least religiously, better as God made him than as we 
find him in the savage state. However he may have im- 
proved in other respects, in that spiritual nature which 
makes him God's child, he has fallen. As a religious 
being he degenerated into the primeval barbarism, and 

i Lecture I, 



328 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

did not grow up into it out of a deeper ignorance of the 
true God. 

Perhaps there is no fact on which Parker insists more 
strongly, than the infinite perfection of the Creator. Yet 
he does not seem to see that the biblical doctrine of a fall, 
and of the religious degeneracy of man, is necessary to sus- 
tain this vital fact. That, rather than his own doctrine of 
progress from a life wholly brutish, is the logical inference 
from God's infinite perfection. He insists, with 
the charac- great earnestness, that God has a perfect mo 

terofGod. . r 

tive, and perfect purpose, and makes a perfect 
use of the most perfect means in fulfilling that purpose. 
Now, which being is more worthy of such a God, more 
worthy of infinite wisdom and love to create as the father 
of a religious race? Shall the first term in this grand 
series be a savage, more a. brute than a man ; One who, by 
the necessity of his organization, and with no capacity for 
a less revolting worship, sacrifices his child to the cat which 
he has defied ? Or shall this wondrous creature, made for 
fellowship with the great Father of men, be such as that 
Adam who is described to us in Genesis ; upright, fashioned 
after the image of God, searching the heavens with fearless 
eye, and awaiting the visits of the Infinite One among 
the trees in the cool of the day? Certainly we should 
expect such a being, rather than the monster of Parker's 

theory, to come forth from the divine Artist's 
Weakens hand. There is also a firmer basis of hope for 

our basis *■ 

of hope for m an, more reason to expect that he will rise 

man. ' A 

into communion with God and become a par- 
taker of the divine holiness, if originally endowed with 
those high powers which the biblical account of his crea- 



PANTHEISM. 329 

tion ascribes to him. But those high powers involved the 
gift of free-will. Man, like the Creator, could determine 
for himself what course of moral action he would pursue. 
In the exercise of this freedom, with holiness and sin alike 
possible to him, he was tempted into the choice of the lat- 
ter. Thus he forsook the God in whose image he was 
made, and sank down to the level of superstition where 
Parker finds him. And hence it follows, that 
the first great need of man is not progress in his The do °- 

° i o trine of re- 

present state, but redemption from it. The JSSmS" 
whole scheme of a revelation from God, with 
the purpose of an atonement and restoration, is seen to 
be rational. Our faith in the goodness of God leads us to 
expect that he will interpose for the recovery of his chil- 
dren. And that remedial work must have on it the seal 
of his own divine name and authority, and must be in the 
hands of a Mediator who is not subject to human limita- 
tions. The blind cannot lead the blind. None but a 
Saviour who has never fallen, and whose nature is such 
that he cannot be tempted of evil, may hope to avail for 
us in this sore exigency. 

I have now sketched the main features of Parker's the- 
ism ; and have indicated, in brief, the line of refutation to 
which he is exposed, assuming him to be only a 
theist, and the leader he has been supposed to simply a 
be. It may appear, however, as we go on, that 
this assumption is unfounded, or at least that it but par- 
tially states the case ; that there was in him, not a conclu- 
sion, perhaps, but a tendency towards a conclusion, which 
forbids us to assign him the place of leadership, and re- 
quires that he be set down as the follower of a school of 



330 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

theorists long known in the history of religious specula- 
tion. Had I been told that Parker was a pantheist, before 
studying him with a view to the settlement of the matter, 
I should have been strongly inclined to deny the charge ; 
and I still deny it, after carefully reading his works, if the 
meaning be that he had finally and openly declared him- 
self to that effect. But that the imputation is altogether 
false, if only the drift and tone of his thinking be meant, 
no thorough student of him, I am sure, will undertake to 
maintain. 

Let us therefore, in the third place, see if 
Was Parser there be any sufficient ground for bringing 

SL pclH L 0.61 St. 

Theodore Parker within the limits of a treatise 
on pantheistic thinking. 

Here it is important to revert, for a moment, to the 
position taken in the introduction to these lectures. It 
was there maintained that there can be but two sources 

of philosophical infidelity ; that all free thought 
a re-state- nas its logical ultimate in pantheism or positiv- 

ment of the ° l l 

a L ternat , iv ? ism : in pantheism when the a-priori or tran- 

of unbelief. r r 

scendental method of thinking is rigidly adhered 
to, in positivism when the a-posteriori or empirical- method 
is strictly followed. Any other forms of infidelity are but 
half-way houses between Christianity and one or the other 
of these two. The human mind having let go its hold 
upon God, and not recovering that hold in Christ, gravi- 
tates steadily towards Spinoza or Comte. Christ, if I may 
so speak, stands as it were at the apex of the triangle of re- 
ligious thought ; and whomsoever faith in Christ does not 
uphold at that point, the same settles steadily downward 



PANTHEISM. 331 

through the process of speculation, till he reaches the base 
line; the original bent of his mind having meanwhile, ac- 
cording as it is transcendental or empirical, carried him 
aside on that line either to the angle occupied by Spinoza, 
or to that occupied by Comte. Any intermediate posi- 
tions, such as deism, theism, scepticism, rationalism, natu- 
ralism, are but points in the process, where he is held in 
suspense for a longer or shorter time. 

This statement is, if I mistake not, confirmed by the 
drift of Parker's speculations. Having cast off 
the authority of Christ, he did not escape the Par j5, er .. 

J ' l could not be 

fatal spell which draws all minds downward, apositiv- . 
either in the direction of pantheism or positiv- 
ism ; not in the direction of positivism in his case, as we 
shall soon see. The bent of his genius was not empirical, 
but transcendental. He found the germs of the absolute 
religion, not in the philosophy of the senses, but in that 
of consciousness. Had he lived to the present time, when 
the intuitional philosophy is at a low ebb and the sensa- 
tional is coming in like a flood, he would logically stand 
with the retiring rather than the advancing host. 

There is one subject on which we need to discriminate 
with care, or we shall often confound the pan- 
theist with the positivist: it is the subject of maybe 1 mis- 
development in nature. They both speak of positivism, 
this, sometimes in nearly the same words ; but 
if we consider we shall see that with one it is a develop- 
ment downward, and with the other a development up- 
ward. Pantheism is thus made to appear as a kind of 
a-priori positivism, and positivism as a-posteriori pantheism. 
According to the pantheist there is an efflux of the divine 



332 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

essence ever farther and farther down, constituting nature, 
both the conscious and the unconscious. The positivist 
admits no such divine essence, much less any manifesta- 
tions of it under natural forms ; but, on the contrary, holds 
that all the reality we can know is centred in nature, and 
is constantly ascending towards consciousness by the action 
of inherent forces. We might think that even Emerson 
is a positivist, when he says that the plants grope ever 
upward towards consciousness ; but he is not, for he else- 
where teaches that it is the going forth of the eternally 
conscious "soul," ever downward from the higher to the 
lower forms, that makes nature. The development of 
nature, however variously expressed, is the divine mind 
taking its own outgoings back into itself. 

Thus, rather than in the atheistic sense, are we to under- 
stand Parker when he seems to use the language of positiv- 
ism or materialism. " I have been into man with my 
scalpel in my hand, and my microscope, and there is no 
soul. Man is bones, blood, bowels, and brain. Mind is 
matter. Do you doubt this ? Here is Arnoldi's perfect 
map of the brain : there is no soul there ; noth- 

Parker not .. . 

a material- mg but nerves. 1 lie puts these words into the 
mouth of an imagined teacher of materialism, 
and so far from accepting the doctrine they embody, he 
utters his- strong abhorrence of it. It is true that he often 
speaks kindly of atheists, especially while contrasting them 
with orthodox Christians, for whom he has no patience ; 
yet he does not leave us to infer from this that he has any 
sympathy with atheism. " The Christian world," says he, 
" has something to learn, at this day, even from the athe- 

* i Sermons of Theism, p. 19. 



PANTHEISM. 333 

ist ; for he asks entire freedom for human nature, — free- 
dom to think, freedom to will, freedom to love, freedom to 
worship if he will, not to worship if he will not. And if 
the Christian world had granted this freedom, then there 
would have been no atheism. If theology had not severed 
itself from science, science would have adorned the church 
with its magnificent beauty. Even the protests against 
' Christianity ' are oftenest made by men full of the reli- 
gious spirit. Many of the ' unbelievers ' of this age are 
eminent for their religion ; atheists are often made such 
by circumstances. M. Comte must have a new Su- 
preme, — JVouveau Grand Etre, — and recommends daily 
prayers to his composite and progressive deity." * What 
Parker here says of the duty of the Christian church to 
admit atheists into its fellowship, my present purpose does 
not require me to notice ; but in denying, as he 
does, the possibility of atheism, he shows that possibility 

T . ,. . , r. . . ~ of atheism. 

he is not a disciple 01 any a-postenori system of 
philosophy or religion. No one could speak more ear- 
nestly, or more feelingly and indignantly, than he, against 
speculative atheism. It is in a strain of tearful remon- 
strance almost, that he exclaims, " Take away my con- 
sciousness of God ; let me believe there is no infinite God ; 
no infinite Mind which thought the world into existence, 
and which thinks it into continuance ; no infinite Conscience 
which everlastingly enacts the eternal laws of the universe, 
no infinite Affection which loves the world, — then I should 
be sadder than Egyptian night. Yes, I should die in 
uncontrollable anguish and despair." 2 Our author had 
been accused of atheism, by some of those who uudertook 

i Sermons of Theism, Introduction, pp. 70, 72. 2 Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 



334 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

to criticise his Discourse of Religion. It may be, there- 
fore, that in his Sermons of Theism, preached some years 
later, he spoke more strongly than he otherwise would, in 
order to vindicate himself before his own friends, who 
were firm theists. No doubt, also, he felt lonely in that 
state of comparative isolation into which his controversies 
had driven him ; and it comforted him, more than at an 
earlier day, to believe that an infinite Friend was helping 
him in his hard battles* It is true that his representations 
of the nature of God are somewhat vague. He seems to 
confuse the Creator with his works, in saying that God. 
" thinks the world into existence and continuance." Yet 
even this language, though indicating that his theism has 
something peculiar in it, strengthens his protest ; nor have 
we any reason to doubt, what he so earnestly avers, that 
there was no tendency in his thinking, which by any 
possibility could have carried him on to the errors of 
positivism, 

The charge of vulgar atheism, brought against Parker, 
may therefore be dismissed as wholly untenable. Nor is 
evidence wanting that Parker held stoutly back, on the 
other hand, from what he defines as pantheism. " Two 
things," he says, " are necessary to render religion possible ; 
namely, a religious faculty in man, and God out of man as 
the object of that faculty." 1 The phrase "God out of 
man" seems clear and decisive. We should expect it 
only from an opponent of pantheism. Speaking 
he was a of what he calls the infancy of religion, Parker 

pantheist. . " 

says, "Its highest form was the sublime but 
deceitful reverence which the old Sabaean paid to the host 

1 Discourse of Religion, p. 151. 



PANTHEISM. 335 

of heaven, or which some Grecian or Indian philosopher 
offered to the universe personified, and called Pan, or 
Brahma, God was worshipped in a sublime and devout, 
but bewildering pantheism. He was not considered as 
distinct from the universe." 1 Pantheism, then, is one of 
the earlier forms through which the absolute religion has 
passed in the process of historical development. Limiting 
his view to the form only, and assuming that he has given 
an exhaustive statement of the nature of all pantheism, he 
may be right in saying that he is not a pantheist. And 
yet, even with this statement, it is only in the "transient" 
element of religion that he makes himself to differ from 
the Brahman. A different culture induces a different form, 
but the religion itself is in either case the same, being ab- 
solute and always unchangeable in essence. 

The manifest anxiety of Parker not to be thought a 
pantheist is at times suspicious. Why should he be so 
fearful of that of which he is wholly unconscious ? This 
anxiety mav account for the narrow and inade- 

. . . But his 

quate definition of pantheism which he lays definition is 

inadequate. 

down. One may prove that- he differs from any 
doctrine whatsoever, if allowed to define it as he pleases. 
Pantheism is not altogether an ancient thing. It has 
thriven recently, and even now exists ; and the question is 
whether Parker's speculations have anything in common 
with this modern movement. In one place, after denoun- 
cing positivism, he says, " Besides, the pantheists tell us of 
their God, who is but the sum total of the existing uni- 
verse of matter and of mind, immanent in each, but tran- 
scending neither, imprisoned in the two ; blind, planless, 

1 Discourse of Religion, p. 53. 



336 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

purposeless, without consciousness, or will, or love ; de- 
pendent on the shifting phenomena of finite mind and of 
finite matter, finite itself; a continual Becoming this or 
that, not absolute Being,, self-subsistent, and eternally the 
same perfection : their God is only law, the constant mode 
of operation of objective and unconscious force." 1 We 
are amazed that any respectable writer should think this a 
fair view of pantheism. The misrepresentations of Chris- 
tian thinkers, which Parker published at different times, 
have long been familiar to us. These we had set down to 
prejudice, and to that one-sidedness which the heat of con- 
troversy is apt to beget. It now appears, however, that 
the friends of Christianity are not an exception ; that 
Parker misapprehends the system taught by Fichte and 
Emerson, quite as strangely as evangelical systems ; that 
his inability to treat an opponent candidly, amounted to a 
constitutional weakness. If the idealistic pantheism of 
Germany makes God "unconscious," "-finite," "not abso- 
lute," " dependent on shifting phenomena," then there are 
no pantheists. Does the theism of Parker require this 
unfair definition of pantheism, in order that it may continue 
to be theism ? If so, many an earnest follower 
Spinoza. °f Spinoza may claim to be a theist ; for proba- 
bly not one of them would accept the account 
our author gives of their doctrine. Yet Parker is not 
wanting in charity towards the leaders of pantheistic 
thought in modern times. He makes his narrow definition 
acquit them together with himself. He allows no place 
to the object of his dread, outside of barbarism. Fichte, 
Schelling, and Hegel do not teach pantheism ; for they do 

i Experience as a Minister, p. 147. 



PANTHEISM. 337 

not teach the absurd theory he describes. He assumes 
them all to be good theists ; as he is, judged by his own 
definition ; and even in regard to Spinoza he says, 
"Pantheism is a word of convenient ambiguity, and 
serves as well to express the odium theologicum as the 
more ancient word atheism." l 

But Parker claims to be mainly in agreement with these 
masters. If he interprets them rightly, what they would 
call the reflex of the divine consciousness does not differ 
from what he calls the feeling of dependence in man. 
'And if he knows God by a direct intuition, as manifest in 
the feeling of dependence, then his doctrine of God can- 
not be at a great remove from theirs. This similarity of 
doctrine evidently did not escape him ; and therefore, to 
defend himself,, he tries to show that Spinoza and his suc- 
cessors had been misunderstood. He claims that they 
were no more pantheists than the mystics of the middle 
ages, or the evangelist John ; thus leaving us to infer that 
such men as Tauler, and the beloved disciple, did not, any 
more than Hegel, recognize the separate existence and 
personality of both the Creator and the creature. He 
says in one place that the question between the pantheist 
and pure theist is this : " Is God the immanent cause of 
the world, or is he not f " Now, we have already seen, 
and shall yet further see more positively, that Parker 
takes the affirmative of this question. He re- 
peatedly speaks, almost in the exact words of 4tug Lt whiie 
Spinoza, who says, "God is the immanent or tne namef 
indwelling, not the transient or outside cause 
of all things." 2 Clearly, then, he is a Spinozist by his 

* Discourse of Religion, p. 91, note. 2 Etlrics, Prop. XVIII. 

22 



338 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

own admission, though he refuses to be called a pan- 
theist. How does he escape the odious name? It is, as 
we have already seen, by resorting to a definition which 
does not cover all the forms of pantheistic thinking. 
"Monotheism," he says, "is the worship of one supreme 
God. He may, however, be supposed to manifest himself 
in one form, or in all forms, as the Pan and Brahma of the 
Greek and Indian ; for it is indifferent whether we ascribe 
no forms or all forms to the infinite." 1 But that is a sin- 
gular species of theism, certainly, which teaches that the 
Greek polytheism did not differ from monotheism essen r 
tially, and which saves itself by asserting that the infinite 
may be defined under any form, or as being without form. 
It is amazing, considering how much space our author 
devotes to the subject, that he succeeds so poorly in free- 
ing himself from the charge of pantheism. 

I proceed, therefore, to trace some of the more 
tfveprooft positive indications, in Parker's writings, of a 
Ssnu anthe pantheistic drift in what he calls his theism. If 
I seem to go over ground already traversed in 
doing this, it will be because even his denials of pantheism 
do not deny, so much as affirm, what must be regarded as 
pantheistic doctrine. Let me further say, if I seem to any 
to do him injustice in this examination, that I shall at 
least hope to misrepresent him less than he does Chris- 
tianity. I may foil to discern the tendency of his doc- 
trine ; but I can hardly be guilty of such misrepresenta- 
tion as he utters when he says, " The popular theological 
idea represents God as finite, limited subjectively by self 

i See Discourse of Religion, pp. 8(t-92. 



PANTHEISM. 339 

ishness, wrath, and various evil passions, objectively by 
elements in the world of men which continually prove 
refractory, and turn out as he did not intend." 1 

Here it is to be observed that the same philosophy 
which was carried out into pantheism in Germany, gave 
direction to our author's inquiries after religious truth. 
He says, " I found most help in the works of 
Immanuel Kant. If he did not always furnish Kantian 

. T , t . philosophy. 

conclusions 1 could rest m, he yet gave me the 
method, and put me on the right road." 2 Kant did for 
him, that is, the same work as for Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel; started him in his investigations, but did not go 
far enough to satisfy him. Parker's argument for the 
existence of God is that of the transcendentalist : " Now 
•the existence of this religious element," he says, "our 
experience of this sense of dependence, this sentiment of 
•something without bounds, is itself a proof by implication 
of the existence of its object, — something on which de- 
pendence rests. The belief in God's existence is there- 
fore natural, not against nature. It comes, as the belief in 
light comes, by using the eyes. The knowledge of God's 
existence may be called an intuition of reason. Our be- 
lief in God rests not on a-priori or a-posteriori arguments ; 
on no argument; not on reasoning, but reason. The 
arguments a-priori and a-posteriori confirm our belief." 3 
Thus fir some of the foremost of Christian theologians 
would agree with Parker. It is when he begins to define 
his theism, when he speaks of the nature of the God he 
finds in reason, that we cannot go with him. " Specula- 

i Sermons of Theism, p. 157. 2 Experience as a Minister, p. 42. 

3 Discourse of Religion, pp. 19, 21, 22. 



340 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

tive theism," he says, " is the belief in the ex- 

Hisdefini- . J 

tionofGod istence of God, in one form or another; and I 

does not 

exclude call him a theist who believes in any God. A 

pantheism. J 

man may deny actuality to the Hebrew idea of 
God, to the Christian idea of God, or to the Mahometan 
idea of God, and yet be no atheist." l " A man says, there 
is no God. But he says, Nature — meaning by that the 
whole sum-total of existence — is powerful, wise, and 
good ; Nature is self-originated, the cause of its own ex- 
istence, the mind of the universe, and the providence 
thereof. Very well. In such cases, the absolute denial 
of God is only formal, not real. The quality of God is 
still admitted, and affirmed to be real ; only the represen- 
tative of that quality is called Nature, and not 
toeiSs? called God - Tbat is onl y a change of name." 2 
As if this were not enough to make clear the 
pantheistic drift of his theism, our author says, in close 
connection, " Spinoza may call God natura naturans, but 
he admits the existence of the thing so diversely entitled. 
The name is of the smallest consequence." 3 Of the 
smallest consequence, surely, if, as he says in another 
place, "There is but one religion, as one ocean; though 
we call it faith in our church, and infidelity out of our 
church." 4 

It is difficult at times to make out the entire consistency 
of Parker. In one connection he condemns the later pan- 
theism of Germany, saying, "That is a fatal error with 
Hegel, and with his followers in England and America." 5 

i Sermons of Theism, p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 9. 

3 ibid. 4 Discourse of Religion, Introd., pp. 6, 7. 

5 Sermons of Theism, p. 155. 



PANTHEISM. 341 

But this criticism is baaed on a false imputation. It 
assumes certain errors, which Hegel and his followers, 
whatever their mistakes, do not hold. Parker here 
charges upon them that gross pantheism which is all that 
his own narrow definition allows. He seems to forget his 
apology for them in another place, where he gives a less 
inaccurate statement of their views. " There are two 
classes of philosophers," he says, " often called atheists ; 
but better, and perhaps justly, called pantheists. One of 
these says, ' There are only material things in existence, 
resolving all into matter ; the sum-total of these material 
things is God.' That is material pantheism. If I mistake 
not, M. Comte, of Paris, and the anonymous author of 
4 Vestiges of Natural History in Creation,' with their nu- 
merous coadjutors, belong to this class. The 

. . . . Misrepre- 

other class admits the existence ot spirit, some- sents pan- 
theists, 
times resolves everything into spirit, and says, 

' The sura-total of finite spirit, that is God.' These are 

spiritual pantheists. Several of the German philosophers, 

if I understand them, are of that stamp." 1 Evidently our 

author does not " understand them," if he really believes 

that they resolve all things into " finite " spirit. By his 

definition, Hegel himself was not a Hegelian. We are 

left to infer that Parker had no clear or fixed views of the 

two grand and conflicting systems of philosophy. He 

must show not only that he is not a Comtist, and that he 

rejects the crude theories here imputed by him to Hegel, 

but that he has no sympathy with what we know to be 

the real Hegelianism, if he would prove that he is not a 

pantheist. His denial of the imaginary doctrine is so put 

i Sermons of Theism, pp. 154, 155. 



342 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

as to affirm the actual doctrine taught by Spinoza and his 
successors. He says that the pantheism he disowns rep- 
resents God as in a state of progressive development. 1 
But this is the doctrine of Comte's positive religion. It 
is as far from real' pantheism as the east is from the 
west. The later German philosophers held no such doc- 
trine ; nor Carlyle, nor Emerson. He does those writers 
great injustice when he says that they thus believe and 
teach. They believe in the eternal completeness of God 
as firmly as he. He confounds the fact with the manifes- 
tation, the Being with the Becoming. They say God is 
Being; only in what we call our knowing him, is he a Be- 
coming. If Parker's definition acquits himself, it acquits 
Emerson. But it fails to make out a clear case of theism 
for either, since it does not touch the real ground of dis- 
tinction. 

Having said that he dissents from pantheism as defined 

by himself and as he wrongly ascribes it on the one hand 

to Comte and on the other to Hegel and his followers, 

Parker goes on to utter words, almost in the 

Identifies . . n 

God with next sentence, which harmonize perfectly with 

the world. . 

the mam principles ot the pantheists. " I here 
is no point of space, no atom of matter," he says, "but 
God is there." 2 How can he claim that he holds to a 
God distinct from the world, after saying, " Finite matter 
and finite spirit do not exhaust God. He transcends the 
world of matter and of spirit, and in virtue of that tran- 
scendence continually makes the world of matter fairer, 
and the world of spirit wiser." 3 This is saying that all of 
God is not yet manifested ; but it does not separate him 

1 Sermons of Theism, p. 155. 2 Ibid., p. 156. 3 ibid. 



FANTHEISM. 343 

from the world, and make him an independent existence. 
Wittingly or unwittingly, Parker speaks with the panthe- 
ist when he says " There is really a progress in the mani- 
festation of God, but not a progress in God the mani- 
festing." * Spinoza could accept that statement, both as 
to its affirmation and its denial. We think our author is 
going to proclaim himself a veritable theist, when he says, 
" God must be different in kind from the world of matter 
and of man." But in the next" breath he changes ground' 
and speaks of that difference as being only in degree : 
" They are finite, he infinite; they dependent, he self-sub- 
sisting; they variable, he unchanging. God must include 
both matter and spirit." 2 If the only difference between 
God and the universe be that one is infinite and the other 
finite, then are they the same qualitatively. And if the 
universe be but the progressive manifestation of God, 
what is there besides God? Schelling could not teach the 
doctrine of id entity in plainer terms. The doctrine that 
" all difference is quantitative," cannot be pantheism in 
Germany and good theism in America. 

In his efforts to contrast the human and divine, Parker 
makes no mention of distinct personalities, but says, 
" Man's consciousness of God and God's consciousness of 
himself must differ immeasurably. No man can have an ex- 
haustive conception of God, — one, I mean, which uses up 
and comprises the whole of God." 3 To some 
even this utterance may not seem to brinsj our w i* h God 

J ° subject and 

author clearly out on pantheistic ground. But ° bjcct are 

•J i o the same. 

can there be any doubt after the following ? 

"In the 'self-consciousness of God subject and object are 



i Sermons of Theism, p. 156. 2 ibid., p. 154, 3 ibid., p. 153. 



344 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

the same, and he must know all his own infinite nature." 1 
Certainly, if there be no pantheism here, we must con- 
clude with Talleyrand, that words were made to conceal 
thought, and not to express it. It is a significant fact 
also, in view of this bold utterance, that Parker, while 
careful to show how he differs from deism and atheism, 
forgets his usual caution on the other side, not even allud- 
ing to pantheism. His words embody the doctrine of 
Schelling, almost in Schelling's own terms; yet he no- 
where applies to that doctrine the name which would in- 
dicate its real nature, but couples that name with a false 
definition of his own. " I use the word theism," he says, 
" as distinguished from atheism, the denial of God ; from 
the popular theology, which afirms a finite ferocious 
God ; and from deism, which affirms a finite God without 
ferocity." 2 Deism is better than Christianity, for its God 
is "without ferocity," though still "finite." "It starts 
c from the sensational philosophy, and abuts in 

deism. materialism, leaving out of sight the intuition of 

human nature." 8 The superiority of Parker's theism, he 
claims, is that it begins in consciousness, and avoids the 
finiteness, or, which is the same thing, as we shall soon 
see, the personality of the God of deism. 

Parker preached several glowing discourses on the sub- 
ject of immortality. Here certainly was an opportunity, 
if he desired it, to state his belief in the personal and con- 
scious existence of men after death, which 
immortality would have gone far to disprove his alleged 
sympathy with pantheism. But he made no 
such use of that opportunity. He goes no further than tr 

1 Sermons of Theism, p. 154. 2 Ibid., p. 152. 3 Ibid. 



PANTHEISM. 345 

say, alluding to those discourses years after, " The in- 
stinctive intuition of the immortal, a consciousness that 
the essential .element of man, the principle of individuality, 
never dies," had been a prominent topic in his preaching. l 
Here may be a faith broad enough for fancy and imagina- 
tion, and wherewith to delight undiscriminating hearers ; 
but surely one must hold to something more than the im- 
mortality of u the essential element of man," in order to 
teach that the future life will be so related to the present 
that memory may join them together as experiences of the 
same person, — which is the only idea of immortality at 
all inspiring, or even intelligible to us. Our bodies are 
immortal, in the sense that the particles of matter which 
make them are forever reappearing in other forms. They 
never perish. Emerson has discoursed of immortality to 
the edification of Christian worshippers. But what they 
took for the immortality of the person as now living and 
conscious, he seems to have meant only for the eternity of 
the impersonal " soul " which fills all things. There is no 
valid proof that Parker's doctrine differed essentially from 
his ; and he declares that if we raise' the question of the 
immortality of the conscious individual, looking to the 
future, and not wholly satisfied with the present, we are 
" already fallen." 

We have seen that Parker, after saying that the ques- 
tion between the pantheist and theist is one of 
the immanency of God in the world, seems to neniinaii 
side with the former. Pie repeatedly makes 
statements which go to show, if he did not take that side, 
that he considered it as differing only by the faintest 

1 Experience as a Minister, p. 42. 



346 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

shade from the other. In giving his experience as a min- 
ister, he says, " I believed in the immanence of God in 
man, as well as matter, his activity in both." 1 "The in- 
finitely perfect God is immanent in the world of matter, 
and in the world of spirit; each particle thereof is insep- 
arable from him, while he transcends both. There must 
be a complete solidarity between God and the twofold 
universe." 2 Still more decisively he says, in his Discourse 
of Religion, " The material world, with its objects sub- 
limely great or meanly little, as we judge them ; its atoms 
of dust, its orbs of fiie; the rock that stands by the sea- 
shore, the water that wears it away ; the worm, a birth of 
yesterday, which we trample under our foot ; the streets 
of constellations that gleam perennial overhead; the as- 
piring palm tree fixed to one spot, and the lions that are 
sent out free, — these incarnate and make visible to us all 
of God their several natures will admit." 3 "God, then, is 
universally present in the world of matter. He 
"God is i s the substantiality of matter. No atom of 

the substan- 
tiality of matter so despised and little but God, the In- 

matter." r 

finite, is there. God is immanent in the world, 
however much he transcends the world. He is the ground 
of nature ; what is permanent in the passing ; what is 
real in the apparent. All nature, then, is but an exhibition 
of God to. the senses. It is the fulness of God that flows 
into the crystal of the rock, the juices of the plant, the life 
of the emmet and the elephant," 4 Do not these extracts 
confirm the view T , that all searching after truth, which is 
independent of divine guidance, must at last come either 

i Experience as a Minister, p. 39. 2 Ibid., pp. 80, 81. 

s Discourse of Religion, pp. 164, 165. * Ibid., pp. 161, 162, 163. 



PANTHEISM. 347 

to the position of Spinoza or to that of Comte \ It is not 
in the power of language to state, if they do not, the 
identity of God with the world. If God is " the substan- 
tiality of matter," I do our author no injustice, but rather 
state the case in its mildest possible form when I say that 
there was in his theism a drifting towards pantheism. 

On the subject of a person's responsibility for 
the form of religious faith he may hold, Parker responsible 

for the re- 

speaks after the manner of Goethe and Carlyle. I'g'on they 
All the religions of the world are forms of the 
absolute religion, which manifests itself thus variously by 
virtue of fixed law. The faiths of men cannot be other 
than they are. The religion which exists necessarily in all 
is bearing them on, through whatever temporary forms, to 
the same blessedness ; and this high result is sure to be 
reached, irrespective of any free volitions they may put 
forth. He says, " All men are at bottom the same ; but as 
no two nations or ages are exactly alike in character, cir- 
cumstances, or development, so therefore, though the re- 
ligious element be the same in all, we must expect to find 
that its manifestations are never exactly alike in any two 
ages or nations, though they give the same name to their 
form of worship. From the difference between 

• n n i i i it different 

men, it follows, that there must be as many ait- religions a 

necessity of 

ferent subjective conceptions of God, and forms circum- 
stances, 
of religion, as there are men and women who 

think about God, and apply their thoughts and feelings to 

life. The phenomena of religion, like those of science and 

art, must vary from land to land, and age to age, with the 

varying civilization of mankind ; must be one thing in 

New Zealand, and the first century, and be something 



348 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

quite different in New England, and the fifty-ninth century. 
They must be one thing in the wise man, and another in 
the foolish man. They must vary also in the same indi- 
vidual. The religion of the boy and the man, of Saul the 
youth and Paul the aged, how differently they appear ! " 1 
But there are men, intelligent thinkers of the fifty-ninth cen- 
tury, quite able to find out what their own belief is, with 
no help from Parker, who claim to hold the religious faith 
of the first century; nor is it at all likely that Paul, whose 
opinion in the case must be regarded as at least equal to 
Parker's, was conscious of one way of salvation when he 
repented at Damascus, and of another when he wrote to 
Timothy. The Christian religion is the same now that it 
was in the beginning ; nor is there any state of society, 
however refined or however rude, to which it is not equally 
adapted. But granting that Parker has the facts of his- 
tory on his side, the thing to be noticed in what he says is, 
that a stern necessity has fixed men in their various beliefs, 
— which beliefs are not essentially different, but at bottom 
one universal religion. All is the same, and all 

All the ' . . , , , . , , ,, , 

same at inevitable ; a statement which accords perfectly 
with the views of acknowledged pantheists. 
" The religion of each is the same, distinguished only by 
the more or less." 2 Again he says, after having spoken 
of fetichism, polytheism, dualism, pantheism, monotheism, 
" Each of these forms represented an idea of the popular 
consciousness which passed for a truth, or it could not be 
embraced ; for a great truth, or it could not prevail widely ; 
yes, for all of truth the man could receive at the time he 
embraced it. We creep before walking. Mankind has 

1 Discourse of Religion, pp. 47, 48, 49. 2 Ibid., p. 99. 



PANTHEISM. 349 

likewise an infancy, though it will at length put away 
childish things. Each of these forms did the world service 
in its day." 1 

By his own showing, therefore, Parker's religious theory 
is not a finality, but a tendency towards something else ; 
and that drift is the result of a force as resist- 

, , i • t it -it An endless 

less as that which moves the planets through succession 

m m t • of religions. 

space. " To censure or approve Catholicism, or 
Protestantism, is to censure or approve the state of the 
race which gave rise to those forms. They could not have 
been but as they were. To condemn them is to condemn 
the absolute religion ; is to condemn both God and man." 2 
Orthodox Christians should remember this passage, when 
suffering under that wrath which Parker so often pours 
out on their heads. It is only by a figure of rhetoric that 
they are at all culpable. His scorching invective, provided 
he spoke from his theory, was not meant for them, but for 
" the state of the race," which has made them what they 
are. And why he is so enraged at this, we are still puzzled 
to know; for the immanent God is in every "atom" there- 
of, and it is ever opening out, through the necessity of the 
divine inworking, into the more blessed and more fair. 
" The history of man's religious consciousness," he says, 
"seems to be a series of revolutions. What is to-day 
built up with prayers and tears, is to-morrow pulled down 
with shouting and bloodshed, giving place to a new fabric 
equally transient. Prophets were mistaken, and saints 
confounded. Religious history is a tale of confusion. But 
looking deeper, we see it is a series of developments, all 
tending towards one great and beautiful end, the harmoni- 

1 Discourse of Religion, p. 102. 2 Ibid., p. 449. 



350 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ous development of man. The circle of his vision becomes 
wider continually, his ideal more fair and sublime." 1 We 
deny that man has reached any fairer religious ideal than 
grew up in Galilee eighteen centuries ago. But granting 
this again, we see the pantheistic doctrine of necessity 
which Parker holds. The everlasting progress of man in 
religion is not kept up by any supernatural helps, 
nor by gradually learning to choose good rather than evil, 
but is all the while only the spontaneous unfold- 
istic fatal- ing of a religious nature. Speaking of the 

ism. . . 

religious element in man, he says, " In my own 
consciousness I found it to be automatic." 2 " Each form 
of religion has grown out of the condition of some people, 
as naturally as the wild primitive flora of Santa Cruz has 
come from the state of the island ; as naturally as the 
dependent fauna of the place comes from its flora." 3 After 
this full statement of the law of necessity, under which 
Parker makes the religious sentiment eternally act, a neces- 
sity as relentless as the pantheist's fatalism, and in appear- 
ance the same, we are prepared for his unbounded toler- 
ance. This, however he may forget it in the heat of 
debate, is fully equal to that of Goethe, who makes even 

wickedness divine. It admits into its paradise 
toleration. tne greatest sinner, with the same abundant 

entrance as the greatest saint, saying, "Many a 
savage, his hands smeared all over with the blood of 
human sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and 
sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, 
with Socrates and Jesus." 4 

1 Discourse of Religion, p. 105. 2 Experience as a Minister, p. 41. 

3 Ibid., p. 86. * Discourse of Religion, p. 107. 






PANTHEISM. 351 

The immanency of God in the world,- as held by Parker, 
might not be an evidence of pantheism if he had anywhere 
clearly asserted the doctrine of second causes. But he 
denies this doctrine, at least by implication, allowing no 
real efficiency to man even, and making God the one pro- 
ducing cause of all things. What we call our freedom, he 
calls " oscillation." " In the world of nature, not 
endowed with animal life, there is," he says, " no ^uses C .° nd 
margin of oscillation. In the world of animals 
there is a small margin of oscillation. But man has a 
certain amount of freedom ; a larger amount of oscillation, 
wherein he vibrates from side to side." 1 So far as the 
final result is concerned, however, it is indifferent whether 
we say " man has no freedom of will at all," or " some 
freedom of will." " There can be no absolute evil or im- 
perfection in the world of man, more than in the world of 
matter, or in God himself." 2 " Creation and providence 
# are but modifications of the same function. 
Creation is momentary providence ; providence and a provi- 
perpetual creation ; one is described by a point, same. tb ° 
the other by a line. Now, God. is just as much 
present in a blade of grass, or an atom of mahogany, this 
day and every moment of his existence, as he was at the 
instant of its creation." 3 Thus providence is the same 
thing as creation, and creation is the same as emanation, 
according to our author, for besides this statement he else- 
where says, " There can be nothing in nature 

All the 

which God did not put in nature from himself." 4 action of 

nature 

" God is responsible for his creation, his world God's 

1 action. 

of matter and his world of man ; for mankind 

1 Sermons of Theism, p. 167. 8 Ibid., p. 170. 

3 Ibid., p. 160. * Ibid., p. 158. 



352 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

in general ; for you and for me." 1 " The immanence of 
God in nature is the basis of his influence.*' 2 " The man 
with pure theism in his heart looks out on the world, and 
there is the infinite God everywhere as perfect cause, 
everywhere as perfect providence, transcending all, yet 
immanent in each; with perfect power, wisdom, justice, 
holiness, and love, securing perfect welfare unto each and 
all." 3 "The powers of nature, — that of gravitation, 
electricity, growth, — what are they but modes of God's 
action ? " 4 These mighty agents have not even an instru- 
mental function in themselves; they are the immanent 
essence of all things, coming forth in various forms. " All 
the natural action in the material world is God's action, 
whether the wind blows a plank, and the shipwrecked 
woman who grasps it, to the shore, or scatters a fleet, and 
sends families to the bottom." 5 

There are statements in the writings of Parker which 
would indicate that he held the mathematical method • 
of proof, as applied by Spinoza to the principles of the 
Cartesian philosophy. He says, in one place, that the hu- 
man faculties can " ascertain truth in religious matters, as 
in philosophical or mathematical matters." 6 
mathemat- And in another place he says, " The truth of 

ical method. 

the human faculties must be assumed in all our 
arguments, and if this be admitted, we have the same 
evidence for spiritual facts as for the maxims or demon- 
strations of geometry." 7 It would seem, therefore, that 



i Sermons of Theism, p. 174. 2 Discourse of Religion, p. 170. 

8 Theism, p. 179. * Discourse of Religion, p. 163. 

e Ibid., p. 158. 6 Sermons of Theism, p. 152. » 

7 Discourse of Religion, p. 19 (note). 






PANTHEISM. 353 

our author held to this method as the proper guide in the 
search for religious truth. And if he did believe that all 
truth can be mathematically proved, he must have known 
that he was a pantheist. For this method of proof, ap- 
plied rigidly to the analysis of the religious sentiment, 
which is the central principle of his system, affords no 
resting-place short of Spinozism. 

I shall adduce but one other fact here, as indicating a 
pantheistic drift in Parker's speculations, — his view of 
the divine personality. This subject, if I mis- 
take not, is considered as giving a decisive test 2,n ( ai. mper " 
to the religious thinker. One definition of pan- 
theism is, that it is the denial of the personality of God. 
The personality of God is certainly the especial stumbling- 
block of the pantheist, the shibboleth which he cannot 
utter. Parker has much to say of the mind, conscience, 
affection,, will of God, which in itself might satisfy any 
theist; but he uniformly denies personality to God. 
What the nature of the attributes just named can be, or 
how God can awaken our love and homage if he be im- 
personal, we think it would be impossible for the author to 
explain. It does not clear up the matter to say that per- 
sonality is the same as anthropomorphism, and 

it»i ... ,-it , i . Makes per- 

that Parker denies to God only what is meant sonaiitythe 

same as an- 

by this latter term. The words have broadly thropomor- 

~ J phism. 

different meanings. It requires no great learn- 
ing or insight to conceive of persons other than men, per- 
sons having for the most part superhuman qualities. To 
recognize the personal existence of God is a different 
thing from making him such a one as ourselves. This is 
an act of irreverence against which the Scriptures warn 
23 



354 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

us, even while a personal God is the object of worship 
they reveal. The distinction is one which the untutored 
intellect may see ; nor could our author have overlooked 
it, though, to break the force of the more pantheistic word, 
he sometimes joins the two together. In his Discourse of 
Religion he says, " The feelings, fear, reverence, devotion, 
love, naturally personify God; humanize the Deity." 
Thus is God made personal only as any object in nature 

may be ; that is, by personification. It is rhe- 
S°(?n?y^n°a torically, by a figure of speech, but in no other 
sense!" iCal wa y> tnat &od can have personality. The thing 

is not objective and real, but altogether subjec- 
tive. " Some rude men require this," he says, but adds, 
" It must be remembered all this is poetry. This personal 
and anthropomorphitic conception is a phantom of the brain 
that has no existence independent of ourselves." 1 " There 
has been dogmatism enough respecting the nature, essence, 
and personality of God. It avails nothing. As the abso- 
lute cause, God must contain in himself, potentially, the 
ground of consciousness, of personality, — yes, of uncon- 
sciousness and impersonality." 2 This statement certainly 
identifies God, in substance, with all existence ; and also 
reminds us of Hegel's doctrine that being and non-being 

are the same. Not only may God be considered 
ceptioiTof as ne i tner personal nor impersonal, since he is 
sXjextTvef on ty potentially either one or the other, but we 

cannot say that he is conscious or unconscious, 
since in regard to these states there is not the actuality, 
but only the ground or possibility. It is just as true that 
God is impersonal and unconscious, as that he is personal 

1 Discourse of Religion, pp. 156, 157. 2 Ibid., p. 154, 153. 



PANTHEISM. 355 

and conscious. In another place, as we saw, Parker spoke 

of the importance of " a God out of man." Here he seems 

to consider it a matter of.no importance at all. "The 

greatest religious souls that have ever been," he says, 

" are content to fall back on the sentiment and idea of 

God." 1 " God is nowhere in particular, but 

everywhere in general, essentially and vitally versal be- 
ing, 

omnipresent. Denying all particular form, we 
must affirm of him universal being." 2 



I have now stated the evidence, found in Parker's writ- 
ings, which convinces me that I do him no wrong by 
bringing him within the limits of a treatise on pantheistic 
thinking. His religious theorizing may not have come to 
its logical conclusion, even in his own view ; but its ten- 
dency was the same as that of Spinoza, Hegel, Emerson. 
He was sailing the same voyage, and would have reached 
the same port by keeping on. The fact that his ship 
went down in mid-ocean does not prove that it was headed 
some other way. That he is to be judged by 

, . t ill t-1 Parker to be 

his tendency, rather than the conclusions he judged by 

. , „ , . nis tendency. 

had clearly readied, seems evident from his own 
words. He said, near the close of his life, that one of his 
deepest regrets in dying was, that he must leave his sys- 
tem incomplete. " The will to live," he writes from Santa 
Cruz, "is exceedingly strong; more vehement than ever 
before, as I have still much to do, — some things to begin 
upon, and many more now lying half done, that I alone 
can finish ; and I should not like the little I have done to 

1 Discourse of Religion, p. 154. 2 Ibid., p. 158. 



356 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

perish now for lack of a few years' work." 1 Undoubtedly 
it will be better, in replying to the views of Parker, 
whether as stated by himself or his disciples, not to im- 
pute to them decided and intentional pantheism. He, and 
those who more especially represent his views, have chosen 
to be called Theists. Let them bear the name 
o^thSsm! 1 tne y nave assumed. I indicated, near the be- 
ginning of this lecture, the line of refutation to 
which they are open while holding to that theistic ground, 
and teaching an absolute religion forever in a state of 
progressive development. If called pantheists, they will 
flatly deny the charge ; and they can show much that will 
seem, to the view of the undiscriminating, to make good 
their denial. In his popular discourse, therefore, let the 
Christian minister grant them the theism to which they 
lay claim. Then, besides overturning their professed 
theory, it will be easy to show that their thought has not 
yet ultimated itself; that they are not established, but 
drifting; that there is in their theism a tendency towards 
pantheism, — unless perchance it be towards positivism, 
owing to the fact that they are empirical, rather than 
transcendental, in their turn of mind. 2 

Several things conspired to keep Parker from pushing 
his speculation to its logical ultimate. He was 

His real ten- 
dency held a sympathetic student of all the modern sys- 
in check. J l J 

terns of free religious thought ; so sympathetic 
as to show the influence upon him of the last author 

i Experience as a Minister, pp. 26, 27. 

2 The Rev. O. B. Frothingham, of New York, speaking of the impression 
made on himself and others by Mr. Parker's preaching, said, " We were forced 
to man the life-boat, to save ourselves from the floods of pantheism." — Lec- 
ture before the Parker Fraternity (Boston). 



PANTHEISM. 357 

he had read. His settled and vehement hostility to 
everything evangelical threw him unresistingly into the 
arms of the opposite class of writers. Thus he was em- 
barrassed by the amount and variety of his learning ; not 
mastering his materials, so much as seeming to 

be mastered by them; neither an independent of his schol- 
arship, 
thinker, who knew just what he believed, and 

could clearly state and consistently defend it, nor a sturdy 
adherent of some other master ; a multifarious rather 
than accurate student, having partial knowledge of many 
systems, but knowing no one thoroughly ; and loving all 
authors who strengthened him in his fight with ortho- 
doxy, so that he did not care to discover how widely they 
differed from himself and each other. 

Parker claimed to be a consistent Unitarian to the end 
of his life. But to make good this claim he did 
not plant himself on any doctrinal belief of Uni- ^e uSa-° 
tarianism, so much as on its postulate of the nans ' 
supremacy of reason in the search for religious truth. Ac- 
cepting this postulate in the absolute sense in which it is 
held by the advocates of Free Religion, — in other words, 
finding the only source of religious truth in the soul of each 
man, — he found himself forced to disown the authority of 
the Bible altogether, as well as the right of Jesus to be 
called Master and Lord. For this heresy, the " new prot- 
estantism " of the free religionists, he was cast out of the 
Unitarian body ; and he claimed that the Unitarians, in 
excommunicating him, had stultified themselves. At any 
rate, whether or not he had misstated their cardinal prin- 
ciple, the cry of persecution arose; and a number of per- 
sons in Boston, professing a desire to see "fair play," 



358 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

secured for him an opportunity to be heard. Besides this 
nucleus, composed chiefly of Unitarians, others soon began 
to flock around him ; — attracted by his zeal in the reforms 
of the day, for devotion to which they were suffering much 
discomfort in the older churches and conservative circles 
throughout the country. The influence of this audience 
upon the preacher was probably quite as great as his in- 
fluence upon them. Multitudes of them clung 

Some of his . . . . . 

strongest to their evangelical faith, and heard approvingly 

supporters m ° / L r ° J 

disowned his only his reformatory views. 1 He knew the set- 

theology. J J 

tied reverence of the New England mind for 
the Scriptures and for Christ ; and it was only from the 
vantage-ground of his position as a reformer, that he could 
succeed at all in his efforts to undermine or shake it. I 
cannot resist the feeling that there was a strong Christian 
sentiment in the friends he most loved, to say nothing of 
the instincts of his own heart, which was a constant check 
to his speculative tendency. He was too dearly attached 
to those who had rallied to his support in the hour of 
need, to press forward in a course of thinking which, ex- 
cept as veiled from their comprehension, must have done 
violence to their long-cherished convictions. The time for 
earnestly undertaking such a work as this, for devoting 
himself to it with any hope of success, he did not live to 
see. It was easy enough for him to lash the Unitarians 
for their inconsistency, as he believed, in opposing him; to 
lash the Orthodox for their treachery to the spirit of 
the New Testament, in upholding slavery and kindred 
wrongs ; and it was his merciless doing of this, not his 

1 " Mine is the old faith of New England. On those points he and I rarely 
talked." — Address of Wendell Phillips, at the funeral services for Theodore 
Parker in Boston. 



PANTHEISM. 359 

theological notions, but this in spite of them, which made 
him in some respects a leader and guide to other minds. 

It is an instructive fact, that the fullest and clearest 
statements we have of his speculative views are contained 
in a volume mainly written before he was much 

The early 

known to the public. Had the sperms con- statements 

of his views 

tained in that volume been allowed to unfold most de- 
cided. 

and mature, he could have hardly failed, even 
during his not very long ministry, to come out distinctly 
and avowedly on pantheistic ground. But his speculative 
tendency, for such reasons as those just named, seems to 
have been checked. His theological bias was held in sus- 
pense. Devotion to reforms, and regard for the feelings 
of those who stood by him in adversity, blocked the 
wheels of his logic, so that he never clearly and openly 
reached the goal at which alone he could legitimately 
stop. It is significant, as showing that I do not misjudge 
him, that the pantheistic leaning is more apparent in the 
early treatise to which I have alluded, the Discourse of 
Religion, than in later works. It was after he had been 
laboring for years with the earnest New England re- 
formers, that he preached his Sermons of Theism, — in 
which the name Theism is given to his system, and the 
attempt made to distinguish between himself and panthe- 
ists, atheists, and deists. To what shifts of false 
statement and definition that attempt led, at ^ripTurai 
least in the case of pantheism, we have already bestnked. 
seen. It is a fact, of which he was aware all 
through his ministry, that his preaching was more liked 
the nearer it came to evangelical ground. However im- 
portant his peculiar views seemed to himself, he could not 



360 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

preach them, save negatively and indirectly, with any hope 
of persuading the m^s of his more intelligent fearers. 
Hence those views remained in the undeveloped form of 
the early treatise, to find lodgment here and there in a few 
scholarly but ill-balanced minds, who, now that he is no 
more, seem to be completing in themselves the process 
which was begun in him; — trying, that is, to hold by a 
position which is not a position, but a tendency ; and fall- 
ing away one after another into pantheism or positivism, 
according to the original bias of their thinking, where they 
have not fortunately received divine strength to flee back- 
ward, and regain the only sure foundation, which is laid in 
Jesus Christ. 

Weightily true, and nobly solemn in counsel to us all, 
are the words of Tholuck, spoken in view of the fate of all 
human thinking which is divorced from faith in the Son of 
God : " Philosophy can never remain stationary. Aristotle 
expressed the hope, as Cicero says in the Tusculan Ques- 
tions, that philosophy would be perfected in a short time. 
Kant also, in modern times, has snid, ' My philosophy will 
bring eternal peace to the world.' And yet the 

The fate of & L J 

philosophy progress of philosophy is onward, ever onward, 

when be- l _ & r r J 

^ci°rist ith without delay. The truths which are recog- 
nized by one system are discarded by another. 
From this mutability of philosophical dogmas, however, is 
the truly Christian theology exempt. This teaches us to 
rely on one single Man, Who has laid claim to infallibility. 
So soon as we acknowledge that the absolute truth is re- 
vealed by Jesus, then have we such a ground of confidence 
as can never be shaken." 1 In all his efforts to raise up 

i Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. I., p. 207. 



PANTHEISM. 361 

the fallen, and promote justice between man and man, 
Parker could draw no inspiration from his peculiar system 
of religious thought. As his arm is lifted higher to smite 
down great iniquities, and sympathy for the wretched 
breathes more tenderly through his words, he draws nearer 
and nearer to the burden of the teachings of Christ. Eigh- 
teen hundred years of human speculation have 
made no difference. All that is best, even in of h I«2s. ck 
the utterances of this denier of Christ's lordship, 
is an unconscious testimony to the wisdom of the fisher- 
man, — who, when others were forsaking his Master, ex- 
claimed only the more ardently, and with an overflowing 
faith, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
of eternal life." 



LECTURE IX. 

The Strength and Weakness of Pantheism. 

I have now gone over the ground especially marked 
out in this course of lectures. The point taken at the 
beginning of the discussion, and briefly explained and 
defended, was that all systems of religious error have 
their genesis in the estrangement of men from God ; and 

that from this original source two main streams 
Recapituia Q f speculation have flowed forth, owing to those 

opposite mental tendencies, either transcenden- 
tal or empirical, which characterize all thinkers. 1 It is the 
errors of religious thought in which the first of these two 
tendencies may be chiefly traced, that I have thus far con- 
sidered. The subject, therefore, to which my inquiries 
have been limited, was the source and development of 
pantheism ; since it is in pantheism, as I endeavored to 
show, that all a-priori thinking which is not kept by Chris- 
tian faith must find its legitimate stopping-place. An 
examination of ancient authors made it appear that pan- 
theism, at least in its clearly defined and more dogmatic 
forms, is of comparatively modern growth. Historical 
facts were adduced, which tended to show that man did 
not ascend first from fetichism to pantheism, but sank to it 

1 Introduction. 

362 



PANTHEISM. 363 

from pure monotheism, after he had forsaken God. 1 For 
obvious reasons, Benedict Spinoza was selected as the rep- 
resentative of this system. He had been a pupil of Des- 
cartes at the outset ; but it was only the philosophical 
method, not the Christian faith, of his master that he 
accepted. I undertook to show, so far as required by my 
more immediate purpose, what the leading doctrine of 
Spinoza was; as also how that doctrine might be legit- 
imately reached from the .premises of Descartes!* The 
development of pantheism in philosophy was then briefly 
sketched, especially in the school of German transcenden- 
talism, beginning with Kant and ending with Hegel. 3 In 
immediate connection with this, the Tubingen school of 
criticism, as represented by Strauss and Baur, was exam- 
ined with a view to make clear its pantheistic spirit. 4 
Thus the way was open for what seemed to me to enter 
more directly into my main undertaking ; namely, a sur- 
vey of the development of pantheism in literature, — espe- 
cially in the widely-read works of Goethe, Carlyle, Em- 
erson, and Theodore Parker. 5 It is in the treatment of 
these popular authors, whose influence Christianity more 
manifestly meets in its progress, that I have aimed to be 
thorough, and at the same time accurate and candid. I 
have allowed them to state their own views, as far as pos- 
sible, adding my personal comments mainly to elucidate 
the current of their thinking. 

It would be easy to extend this list of names in the 
domain of letters ; though no others have occurred to me 
as deserving to be classed with leaders in pantheistic 

1 Lecture I. 2 Lecture II. 3 Lecture III. 

* Lecture IV. e Lectures V. ; VL, VII., VIII. 



364: HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

doctrine. Very likely something might be gath- 
wcSuded ere( l from almost every great author, which, by 
survey. 118 itself alone, seems to be in sympathy with pan- 
theism. But each writer, I hold, is to be judged 
by his main spirit and tendencies, together with his open 
attitude towards Christianity, rather than by the utter- 
ances he makes here and there when his feelings and 
imagination happen to be strongly excited. I do not 
think it at all necessary to the completeness of my under- 
taking, to trace the particulars in which the writings of 
Swedenborg seem to reproduce those of Spinoza. Pan- 
theism may be the logical ultimate of his doctrines, and 
of the church founded on them, as one ingenious critic 
has tried to prove ; 1 but I am content to leave that ques- 
tion untouched, having laid down the tests by which 
every student of Swedenborg may decide it for himself. 
I have already quoted lines from Pope which are panthe- 
istic in sentiment, and might have added others of similar 
import from the same author. But just how much weight 
should be given to these, as decisive of Pope's speculative 
views in religion, is uncertain ; for he has written much, 
the sentiment of which is opposite to this; nor does it 
appear that he ever declared himself the foe of Christian 
theism. Willis, in his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics 
of Spinoza, adopts the conclusion already referred to, that 
Swedenborg was a Spinozist; but he also puts many oth- 
ers into the same category, by what seems to me a very 
unfair method of criticism. Even the writers of the 



i This critic is the late General Hitchcock, of the United States army, who, 
in 1846, published a work entitled " The Doctrines of Spinoza and Swedenborg 
identified, in so far as they claim a Scientific Ground." 



PANTHEISM. 365 

Bible do not escape his classification ; and authors so 
wholly unlike as the poet Tennyson and the naturalist 
Darwin are named among pantheists. To Wordsworth 
a prominent place is assigned. Undoubtedly this poet, in 
common with many others not pantheistic, has written 
passages which, taken by themselves, have a savor of 
Spinozism. There are lines in the Ode on Immortality 
which carry the doctrine of Plato to the very verge of 
pantheism. Also, in the Ode on Tintem Abbey, Words- 
worth speaks of 

" A presence that disturbs us with a joy 
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
Of something interfused 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and fills the mind of man — 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

But these lines must be explained by others, and by the 
well-known religious views of the author. Wordsworth 
never professed any creed which would warrant us in 
giving his poetry a pantheistic construction; he never 
assumed an attitude of hostility or attack towards the 
Christian religion. But far more surprising than Willis 
is an English clergyman, — Hunt by name, — whose 
work has just fallen under my notice. 1 This critic, in an 
extended treatise on the general subject, finds pantheism 
not only in the writers now named, but in Augustine, 

1 An Essay on Pantheism, by Rev. John Hunt. 8vo. pp. 382 (London, 

186(5). 



366 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Anselm, Leibnitz, Sir William Hamilton, Mansel. Wes- 
ley, and Cowper, and Bryant, as truly as Goethe and 
Shelley, are to him poets of pantheism. He finds the doc- 
trine of Spinoza in Milton and Toplady no less than in 
Emerson. Frederick Robertson, as judged by him, is a 
pantheist of the same class as Theodore Parker. But 
such criticism cannot be allowed. It is wholesale and 
indiscriminate. We are left to infer from it that pan- 
theism is a wholly innocent thing, into which even Chris- 
tian writers must be expected to fall at times. There is, 
as it seems to me that I have successfully shown, a vast 
difference between most of these writers and those whom 
I have classified as pantheists. Undoubtedly I have not 
named all; but it will be found, I think, that those not 
named are either disciples of one or the other of those I 
have examined, or indeterminate in their views, so as to 
preclude all claim to any separate or special treatment. 
If there are around us free-thinkers, and propagandists of 
free religion, even they are substantially answered in the 
reply to Emerson and Parker. Either this, or they do 
not fall within the limits of a treatise on a-priori thinking, 
but belong to the school of empirical thought, and must 
be reserved for treatment under the general head of Pos- 
itivism. 

It was stated, in the Introduction, that some- 
Refutation 

otpanthe- tiling in the way of refutation 'mi^ht be ex- 
ism. ° J • & 

pected at the close of this survey of pantheism. 

To that concluding work we have now come ; and I pre- 
fer to entitle it a statement both of the strength and the 
weakness of pantheism, rather than a precise refutation. 
I do this for two reasons. In the first place, I have 



PANTHEISM. 367 

sought to make the refutation go along side by 
side with the exposition of the doctrine. The Song^Sh 
overthrow of this, and of all forms of religious sition! PO 
error, as was maintained in the latter part of the 
Introduction, depends more on the practical fidelity and 
broad generosity of Christians, than on any arguments 
addressed to the understanding. Yet such arguments 
must not be thrown aside as valueless. It behooves us to 
overturn pantheism from the position of philosophy ; to 
show that the clear head disowns it, as truly as the pure 
and tender heart. This work I have tried to do, in some 
measure, at each point of our progress. Nor did the 
doing it require much break or diversion in our line of 
treatment. The premise on which pantheism rests is so 
simple, that only a brief hint, or turn of a phrase or sen- 
tence, was needed, for the most part, to guard against any 
plausible aspect of the doctrine which met us from time 
to time in the course of our inquiry. It is at the risk of 
repeating myself that I proceed to notice some of those 
suggestions more distinctly. Besides, as I have said in 
the course of the investigation, the best refuta- 

XIig clc&r 

tion of a religious error is the clear statement statement 

j? • a r* l'TT ° f error its 

oi it. ouch a statement of pantheism 1 have best refuta- 
tion, 
endeavored to give, — recognizing it as a half 

truth, and presenting its comely features together with the 

repulsive, in the various authors passed in review. The 

fact that it is not unmixed error in its origin, that it arises 

out of a blending of the false with the true in philosophy, 

would seem to require that something should be said for 

it, however adverse the final decision in estimating it 

thoroughly. But whether I speak of its strength or 



368 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

weakness, I shall still feel, as I thus far have, that every 
mind which goes along with me will see its utter unten- 
ableness, — judging it in the light of those necessary and 
immutable convictions of our nature which never fail to 
pronounce it false when its essential meaning is brought 
clearly to view. 

In the second place, I do not here pretend to 

Every pan- 
theist lias any exact refutation of pantheism, because there 

something' 

peculiar to is something in almost every author treated 

himself. ... 

which might, in that case, seem to require a 
special reply. The gross doctrine which Theodore Parker 
calls pantheism, as if to divert attention from the real 
thing, is too unphilosophical to deserve a particular answer. 
It may draw an odious name from his "theism," when 
offered to minds which do not discriminate ; but to attack 
it would be investing it with a dignity it cannot claim. 
And there are reasons why the recognized masters of pan- 
theism need not be answered separately. Though there 
is something distinctive in each one of them perhaps, yet 
their main position is so essentially the same, 
the^y agree. tnat wh.it thoroughly refutes any one is a sub- 
stantial refutation of them all. In one form or 
another they make consciousness the organ and the cri- 
terion of truth. " I think, therefore I am," is the point 
from which Spinoza sets out, but which he seems to me to 
abandon quite as unwarrantably as Descartes. Conscious- 
ness is the mind's knowledge of what it does as being its 
own acts. It is therefore always a particular and deter- 
mined knowledge, never universal and absolute. Its 
sphere is psychology ; nor can it, by any possibility, tran- 
scend this limit so as to include ontology. It has 



PANTHEISM. 369 

nothing to do with being in general, but is Spinoza's 
always shut up to being in particular. Hence SJtreacif 11 " 
Spinoza, to be consistent, cannot affirm an abso- 
lute reality, of which he is the fleeting manifestation ; for 
on his own premise, and by his own method, he himself, as 
known in consciousness, is the only reality. 

The reasoning of Fichte also is defective, and in the 
same way as that of Spinoza. He cannot pass from the 
finite ego to the Infinite Ego in consciousness. That step 
must be taken by an inference, or through a conviction 
which carries one beyond the province to which conscious- 
ness is shut up. In like manner, Emerson may 

r . J Same fault 

say that his soul is a conditioned image of the in the rea- 

17 ° soning- of 

unconditioned over-soul, but he abandons the so- Fichte and 

Emerson. 

called philosophy of consciousness in thus affirm- 
ing. He utters an ontological doctrine, to which his con- 
sciousness can never attain. And he certainly is one of the 
most consistent of pantheists when he intrenches himself 
within the sphere of psychology, declaring that he is God and 
nature, and that he knows no reality save the subjective self. 
Some of the later pantheists, as if hoping to escape this 
fatal defect in their reasoning, have given a new definition 
of consciousness. 1 They arbitrarily enlarge its function ; 
say that it is not limited to subjective knowledge, but in- 
cludes that which is objective and infinite. They define it 
as a knowing not only with one's self, but with the univer- 
sal whole. Is there, however, anything in human experi- 
ence answering to such a definition ? Mani- Function of 
festly it is not real, but only verbal. An objec- nessmis*" 
tive consciousness is an absurdity. It does not 

See North American Review, Article " Hegel » (April, 1868). 

24 



370 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

even seem to lay a path out from the conditioned to 
the unconditioned. It is a phrase without a meaning, for 
there is no corresponding fact in our experience. What 
these pantheists call " consciousness " is more properly 
suggestion. Spinoza's finite thinking suggests an infinite 
thinking. Fichte's particular ego suggests a universal 
ego. Emerson's my-self suggests an other-self. Hegel's 
being suggests its opposite, which is non-being. But these 
contraries are not united in the human consciousness. 
There is another and more royal faculty of the human 
mind, which holds them together. As soon as we duly 
examine this nobler power, we find that it renders panthe- 
ism forever impossible. The proper office of this power is 
to furnish us with our primary beliefs, — with those con- 
victions respecting ourselves and the world, 

Differs from , . 

the faculty which are universal and necessary. It is prop- 

of intuition. J r r 

erly named the intuitional faculty. This faculty 
it is, however designated, which gives us a sure passage 
out into the ontological world. We may, thoughtlessly or 
for the sake of convenience, call it consciousness ; but it is 
not such a power as to imply, in its workings, that we are 
part and parcel of all which we know. It leaves us eter- 
nally distinct from the external universe with which it 
acquaints us. We can never grant to the pantheist that 
he has found the absolute, the unconditioned, in his own 
consciousness. It is in the exercise of this other, our 
noblest and divinest faculty, — by the intuition of objective 
and necessary truths, — that we leap " the flaming walls of 
the world," and stand face to face with the Father of our 
spirits. The only consistent form of pantheism is that 
idealism by which a man denies all reality save the thought- 



PANTHEISM. 371 

process of which he is conscious. It is not objective, but 
purely subjective. It is not absolute, but forever cast in 
the mould of his particular being. 

We are obliged, therefore, at the very outset, 
to grant the pantheist a position he cannot ^Jntedfor 
legitimately reach, in order to- consider some of sa§e ment ' 8 
the more general arguments on which he relies. 
We will allow that he has planted his foot in the world of 
unconditioned thought, not forcing him to explain the 
process by which he reached that position. Having con- 
ceded this much, the way is open for us to look at the 
arguments with which he seeks to fortify himself, that we 
may know what weight or want of weight there is in 
them. 

It is sometimes said that pantheism follows 
from the truth, admitted by all theists, that God Jf^J 
is an infinite being. This is the point at which pantheism. 
Parker especially stumbles. He fears to clothe 
God with personality, lest God should thereby be unclothed 
of his infinity. To make him personal — so runs the argu- 
ment — is to make him finite. He must be impersonal in 
order to be infinite. Personality involves limitation ; but 
God is unlimited ; therefore God is impersonal. This 
sounds quite conclusive ; is, in form at least, unanswerable. 
But let us look at it. Has the major premise been proved ? 
What human intellect has discovered that personality, 
always and necessarily, involves limitation ? Let us see 
the proof that there is a whit more difficulty in the idea of 
an infinite, than of a finite person. No such evidence can 
be found. The syllogism is therefore baseless, and the 



372 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

whole argument sinks into a fallacious assertion. Person- 
ality is properly but another name for determinateness ; 
and as the amount of being is greater in any case, the 
demand for this is not less, but more. " In reality there is 
no contradiction," says Julius Miiller, " between determi- 
nateness and infinity. Infinity not only implies determi- 
nateness, but positively requires it ; it demands a fulness of 
determinations in no way limited, from without by any 
other being, nor from within by one another." * But by 

what right do pantheists say that God must be 
Sent mF 1 " impersonal because he is infinite ? They deny 
th^pantiie-* a ^ personality. Man, to their view, is essen- 
xSed. as de tially impersonal ; a person only a personification. 

TJpon this theory simple reality, quite as neces- 
sarily as infinity, excludes personality. Persons are the 
images of our own dream. We flatter ourselves with the 
illusion of personality, in this phenomenal and unreal life ; 
but we shall awake from this fantasy at length, — shall be 
absorbed back, that is, into the impersonal substance, whose 
bright shadows we are. Turning from this argument, 
which so remarkably defeats itself, we say that the seat of 
personality is in the will. It is not bound up with the idea 

of a given amount of being, whether less or 
o^pe^cm- 06 more ; but is essential to the idea of freedom, 
ajtyis ree- jj^gj.^ independent choice. There can be no 

personality in the material world ; for that is 
without the determining power, it is the realm of fate. 
According to the pantheist there cannot be personality 
anywhere, for he lifts the iron sceptre of necessity over all 
things. But we know that we are free. Nothing can 

i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book III., Pt: 1., Chap. IV. 



PANTHEISM. 373 

uproot this conviction, or stand against it. In the free- 
dom thus vouched for is the citadel of our personality, of 
all personality. To affirm" that God is impersonal, is there- 
fore to degrade him below man ; is to teach that he can 
never have the sublime sense of liberty which we all have; 
is to affirm that he must come out of the sphere of the in- 
finite, and be as one of his finite creatures, in order to feel 
that he has the power of doing as he will. It is not the 
personality . of God, but of man, that is imperfect. Our 
will is overborne by temptation. It is weak, owing to the 
finiteness of the circle of being in which it acts. 
But God's being is not limited. Its centre is only perfect 
everywhere, its circumference nowhere. Hence pcr * c 
he is immeasurably above us, in all that goes to consti- 
tute him a person. He is infinite in his being, and there- 
fore as a person he is absolutely perfect. 

Another argument, equally high-sounding and equally 
hollow, is founded on the ambiguous postulate 
that the mind cannot act exce23ting where it is. tiontoatthe 
Hence it is inferred, by the pantheist, that all only where 
truth lies within the compass of the mind ; and 
that we can have knowledge of nature, or of any other ob- 
jective thing, only as our minds, in the last analysis, are 
identical with it. In all our acquisitions of truth we are 
mistaken, if we suppose that our researches pertain to ex- 
ternal facts ; for that which we regard as outward is only 
a shadow of the inward, while, spider-like, we spin our 
theories of God and the world out of our own 
dream. But in reply to this argument we have £d byouV * 
only to bring those principles of the common- JeS^ 7 
sense philosophy, so clearly enunciated by Reid 



374 . HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

and Hamilton, and to which I have already referred as 
there was occasion. It is a fundamental belief with us — 
a persuasion beforehand, which we bring with us to every 
problem in science — that we are independent entities, 
separate from nature ; and that it is not through con- 
sciousness as an organ of discovery, but by immediate 
cognitions, that we get our knowledge of the external 
world. These cognitions are inexplicable, yet are they 
irresistible; and we find ourselves always naturally be- 
lieving what they declare. Now we must insist 

else fails, that this fundamental belief in the separate ex- 
must insist . n , . , . "Ill* 

on these be- istence oi the subject knowing and the object 
known is true, until the pantheist proves it to 
be false ; for if it be shown that this our necessary con- 
viction is deceptive, then no one of our faculties is any 
longer trustworthy, and all knowledge of truth, even that 
of which the pantheist makes his boast, is forever at an 
end. There is no point short of absolute scepticism, wild, 
dark, terrible beyond all we can imagine, at which logi- 
cally to stop, the moment we swing loose from our faith 
that the mind may hold converse with objects outside of 
itself. If we know anything, we know that the human 
spirit is a royal child. It can act upon realities external 
to itself. Consciousness is no prison, in which that spirit 
must remain shut away from the knowledge of objective 
truth. The everlasting doors of consciousness are lifted 
up, and through them the soul is constantly looking forth 
on a universe without, sure that what it sees is not " the 
vision of its dream," but a revelation of God's glory in the 
works of his hand, which it may evermore study, and ad- 
mire, and subdue to its royal control. 



PANTHEISM. 675 

One great service which mental science owes to Chris- 
tianity is a thorough investigation of the funda- 
mental beliefs of the soul. They are the armory cental* 70 ' 
to which we never go in vain for weapons; cleanup* 
weapons mighty to the pulling down of the truths?™* 
strongholds of pantheism ; of that pantheism 
which would draw all reality into the maelstrom of con- 
sciousness, and give us its own thought-process, at last, as 
the only universe and the only God. These necessary 
convictions cannot be too much studied in the colleges 
and all other schools where youthful intellect is trained ; 
for they are the golden links in a chain which is the only 
chain that binds the conditioned world to the uncondi- 
tioned. They are the pontoons Avhich the advancing soul 
throws out over the swollen streams of scepticism, making 
for itself a way into the regions of absolute truth, along 
which it moves with assured step, conquering and to con- 
quer. God is in heaven, and we on the earth. Yet the 
Father may commune with his children while we behold 
these angels, faithful messengers between the two worlds, 
ascending and descending along the ladder let down for 
them. 

Pantheists urge, as one of the strong arguments for 
their doctrine, its capabilities as a system of 
philosophy. It deduces all reality from con- ot h comp™- 

^, -, . . , m, . hensiveness. 

sciousness, on mathematical principles. lnis 
is thought to be eminently satisfactory to the philosophi- 
cal thinker. All things — mind, matter, church, state, so- 
ciety, the Bible, the Koran, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster — 
are analyzed back into an eternal nature-process. In this 
solution, we are told, is comprehensiveness; everything 



376 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

covered by a single formula; perfect unity, and perfect 
demonstration. But we say, in reply to this boasted 
strength, that it is a glaring and fatal weakness. The 
claim of comprehensiveness cannot be made good; is just 
the opposite of the actual state of the case. So far from 
being all-inclusive, pantheism is a system of exclusion. It 
begins with leaving out some of the most im- 
cannotbe 1 portant data of a perfect philosophy. There 

made good. .,, . , . ... i . , 

are within us certain convictions, which are 
as inevitable as consciousness, though not in their origin 
a part of it. We have, for instance, an unconquerable 
faith in the freedom of our will ; in the power, whatever 
choice we make at any time, to make either that or some 
other choice. This persuasion is as truly a certainty to us, 
as the thinking of which we are conscious. But the pan- 
theist has no place for this intuition in his system. He 
excludes it. His fatalism represents it as purely a chi- 
mera. Not only does pantheism deny the possibility of 
this freedom; it rejects other intuitions of the reason, 
which are bound up with the action of all our mental fac- 
ulties. Men know that they commit sin, and they feel 
guilty for it. But on the theory of the pantheist that feel- 
ing of guilt is an illusion, for the sin itself is impossible. 
We are as thoroughly persuaded, also, of the distinctions 
of right and wrong as that we think. Yet pantheism, 

by resolving all things into a chain of neces- 
trutha an sity, makes these distinctions impossible. Our 
theism P ex- thoughts are compelled either to accuse or else 

excuse one another. How, then, can we accept, 
as at all adequate to the facts of our nature, a philosophy 
which denies that there is anything praiseworthy or 






PANTHEISM. 377 

blameworthy in human conduct? Its optimism is flatly- 
contradicted by a voice in our conscience which we cannot 
disown. If consciousness be all-inclusive, and its contents 
are evolved under fixed laws of fate, it is absurd to speak 
of gratitude, blame, remorse, the approval or disapproval 
of one's own or another's life. For there can be no such 
thing as good or ill desert. Nothing can be otherwise 
than it is; and we should take everything as it comes, 
thanking no one and condemning no one. But pantheism 
is not founded on anything as inevitable as these same 
feelings of gratitude, remorse, censure, praise. They are 
true if anything is true. And yet the temple which the 
pantheist builds allows them no entrance within its doors. 
The alleged capacity of the system for including and uni- 
fying all truth, is therefore a hollow pretence. Its founda- 
tion is not broad enough for the facts of the soul. It 
leaves out, and makes war upon, one whole department of 
the soul's activities ; namely, the moral and religious. It 
allows room for the thinking faculty alone; affirms that 
all truth lies within the conscious action of this single 
power; and on so narrow, so insufficient a basis, it at- 
tempts to construct a philosophy of the universe and of 
God. 

And this favoritism, it should also be re- 
marked, is shown for an inferior department of ^ e e Q C ^ r t e J 
our humanity. The city which John saw gave f^"£!" ior 
no entrance to the unclean, but only to the pure, 
within its pearly gates ; but the New Jerusalem of the 
pantheist reverses this action, excluding what is noblest, 
and admitting that which maketh a lie. The weeds are 
cherished in his paradise, and the flowers thrown over the 



378 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

walls. Our highest capacity, that in which the most im- 
portant of all truths are revealed to us, is the ethical and 
religious ; the capacity in virtue of which we have to do 
with the right, with God, with immortality. This su- 
preme power of the soul is conscience, the seat of the 
moral sentiments ; and it should ever take precedence of 
mere intellect. Both are worthy of recognition. 

All the fac- _ . . 

uities of lhe true philosophy assigns a niche to each one 

the mind . . . r r J & 

should be in its temple ; but the place of honor belongs, 

recognized. \ ° # 

evermore, not to that which moves only within 
the sphere of natural law, but to that which spurns the 
dominion of fate, — which bears the soul upward on tire- 
less wing, into communion with the holy, the imcaused, 
the self-directed, the divine. Conscience and the under- 
standing should not be put asunder; and in joining them 

together, conscience should be assigned to the 
should be uppermost seat. Hers is of right the throne 

crivGTl t-O 

the moral and the sceptre. The faculty which aids us 
chiefly in acquiring unreligious and conditioned 
knowledge must not command her, much less attempt to 
usurp her kingdom. Its duty is both to admit her, and to 
obey the voice she utters. This was conceded by Kant, in 
his Critique of the Practical Reason, where lie shows that 
bare thinking, the basis on which the pantheist tries to 
build, is too narrow to sustain the most vital truths of 
philosophy. Buckle, whose positivism is at one with pan- 
theism in this particular, rejects the teaching of the sage 
of Konigsberg. He puts knowledge in advance of good- 
ness ; welcomes the data of the senses and understanding, 
and out of them constructs a so-called history of civiliza- 
tion. But he pays no regard to the categories of man's 



PANTHEISM. 379 

moral nature, excepting to class them with the supersti- 
tions of a theological and metaphysical age. The recep- 
tion his work has met with shows the repugnance of his 
doctrine to the convictions of wise and good men. 

It is not theology and metaphysics, but hu- 
man nature, which demands that supreme def- Theempha- 

1 sis of the 

erence be shown to the dictates of the moral ^ancuthis 
faculty, — which forever takes man out of the 
province of necessary law, and makes him the free and 
responsible child of God. That which sees God, and 
opens to us the book of eternal truth, is not the mighty 
intellect, but the pure heart. Behind our inmost thought, 
coming out of the depths of our spirits, far beneath the 
subtlest play of consciousness, there is a thrill upward 
through all the soul's action, confirming and re-echoing 
the sentence, that it pleases the Father to hide from the 
wise and prudent things which he reveals to babes. This 
vision of moral truth is within the veil, in the holy of 
holies of the human spirit. In that inner sanctuary we 
find the true glory of man. And that character is wor- 
thiest, that life mightiest, that philosophy most surely 
grounded, which lays here the beams of its chambers. To 
turn away from this shekinah, is to miss the brightness in 
which forevermore is the hiding of its power. Virtue is 
greater than intelligence. Without holiness there can 
be no clear understanding. Only as he fears the Lord 
and departs from evil, is either the statesman wise, or the 
orator eloquent, or the poet inspired. The essence of 
foolishness is wickedness, and moral perfection is the only 
foundation of a perfect philosophy. There is in every 
man a voice which gladly responds to these simple state- 



380 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

ments. And it is a voice of authority, no less than of 
gladness. It speaks out in indignant tones of 

Every hon- 
est nature threatening, when this order of things is re- 
welcomes it. _ # 

versed — when the crown which innocency 
should wear is made to deck the brow of guilty power. 
It forces us to cry shame, and covers us with blushes, 
when we see a thoughtless public showering honors upon 
a corrupt man, however grand his mental proportions. 
To our moral nature, which looks from between the cher- 
ubim, the aspiring politician is often dwarfed to insignifi- 
cance beside the poor husband, wife, or son ; the dashing 
warrior eclipsed by some pale-faced girl, toiling alone to 
support the mother she loves. And if gratitude were not 
so often "a lively sense of favors expected," — if we could 
make up our minds to act out our inmost and most sacred 
judgments, — that suffering child of penury, not the great 
man whose trumpet is blown before him, would receive 
from us the statue and the eulogy. 

A main source of the charm of pantheism, for many 
_. , , . minds, is its doctrine of the divine immanency. 

The doctrine ' J 

immanency 6 -^ t * s tms doctrine which gives to the writings 
source of a of Theodore Parker nearly all their beauty and 
power. power. He seemed to dwell in an ocean of 

deity. Whichever way he turned, he met the divine in 
all things. The apotheosis of nature was celebrated in 
his sermons, and especially in his prayers. Thus he trans- 
figured the whole world to the imaginations of his dis- 
ciples ; they mistook poetry for philosophy, the enchant- 
ment of their own minds for religion. The fascination of 
Goethe arises in the same way. He did not distinguish 
between the divine and the simply natural. He animated 



PANTHEISM. 381 

nature with God. All the world, under his handling, was 
made to take on a strange beauty; every highest and 
every lowest thing was idealized, and painted as a part of 
the universal whole, till it carried away the reader in an 
ecstasy of nature-worship. If we watch our minds while 
following Emerson through his pages which delight us 
most, we shall see that the secret of his power over us is 
the same. He pours floods of divinity all through the 
world ; and this sorcery of the imagination, boldly prac- 
tised where angels fear to approach, so captivates us that 
we are tempted to believe in it as the exact and unvar- 
nished truth. Yet this charm is dissolved when 
we come to apply the doctrine of God's imma- Pro y<?s too 

1 L * much. 

nency in all its bearings. If everything is di- 
vine, then are even the vices and crimes of men a part of 
the life of God. These, as we have had occasion to notice 
in several of the authors reviewed, may claim our worship 
as really as that which seems to us most innocent and 
pure. Thus it is that the doctrine, by its very thorough- 
ness and consistency, breaks the spell it had thrown 
around us. Its power becomes weak. Our minds are 
disenchanted. The moral sentiments utter their strong 
protest. We behold, with clear eye, that he who makes 
God identical with all reality, deals in fancies rather than 
fact ; he is a poet simply, not a teacher of religion or its 
true philosophy. 

Even the Christian poet, therefore, has every advantage 
which the pantheist may claim, and at the same time may 
keep his pages pure. He knows that God is not The real 

power not 

really the same thing as the world ; and hence, limited to 
J . . .-, this doc- 

while painting nature as divine, he may avoid trine. 



382 HALF TRUTHS A^D THE TRUTH. 

all those objects which are in their essence base, and 

give us only such as are fit emblems of a character 

infinite in holiness and truth. Bryant, for in- 

Bryant. . 

stance, does not claim to be a philosopher, but 
only to utter poetic fancies quickened by faith in a personal 
God, when he says, — 

" Thou art in the soft winds 
That run along the summit of these trees 
In music. Thou art in the cooler breath 
That in the inmost darkness of this place 
Comes scarcely felt — the barky trunks, the ground, 
The moist, fresh ground, all are instinct with thee." 

Nor have we reason to infer that Thomson 

would confound the Creator with his works, 

though he, in the fervor of poetic contemplation, could 

say,— 

" These, as they change, Almighty Father ! these 
Are but the varied God. The rolling year 
Is full of thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring 
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. 
Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm ; 
Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; 
And every sense and every heart is joy." 

The first lines of this description would be as baldly 

pantheistic as anything in Emerson, were we 

These have f orce d to read them in the light of Emerson's 

as much ° 

poetical philosophy; and did not the personification of 

ground as Spring, the fields, the mountains, and the forests, 

which immediately follows, show that the whole 

passage only gives voice to a poetic reverie. We must 



PANTHEISM. 383 

interpret the words of " the Concord Sage " more strictly 
in his May Day and other poems, where he confounds 
natural forces with the attributes of God. He declares 
that he is looking into the real substance of things, and 
expounding them in exact terms, when he says, — 

" Thou seekest in globe and galaxy ; 
He hides in pure transparency. 
Thou askest in fountains and fires ; 
He is the essence that inquires. 
He is the axis of the star; 
He is the sparkle of the spar ; 
He is the heart of every creature ; 
He is the meaning of every feature ; 
And his mind is the sky, 
Than all it holds more deep, more high." 

All those features of modern literature which are rejjul- 
sive to our moral sense, whether found in the novels of 
Charles Reade or the Poems of Swinburne and Walt 
Whitman, can find no apology short of panthe- 
ism. Whatever may be the speculative views ^morality 
of the writers, they are simply vulgar, save as lure! 6 ™ 
they go back to the doctrine which Goethe and 
Carlyle drew from Spinoza. Those who take pleasure in 
the poetry of Byron and Shelley thereby reveal the gross- 
ness of their tastes, or betray a sympathy with that phi- 
losophy to which even sin is divine and beautiful. This 
disregard of the moral imperative, which so abounds in a 
class of popular works, has its primary source, no doubt, 
partly in the wish to please sordid minds for the sake of 
notoriety or gain, j)artly in the eagerness of writers to 
indulge a feeling of unrestrained freedom, and partly in 



384 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

efforts to imitate the great masters of this species of litera- 
ture ; but its only claim to respect, or even to toleration 
among people of pure tastes, is through the favor of that 
system which transfigures all things into deity. Even the 
freshness and originality of Joaquin Miller, his 
MmS" 1 sympathy with nature in her wildest and love- 
liest moods, his brilliant word-painting, which 
makes the wonders of tropical life pass before us so vividly, 
should not blind us to the moral defects of his poetry. 
Describing the filibuster Walker and his fellow-criminals, 
he calls them — 

" Men strangely brave and fiercely true, 
Who dared the West when giants were, 
Who erred, yet bravely dared to err. 

With iron will and bated breath, 
Their hands against their fellow-man, 
They rode — each man an Ishmaelite. 

I did not question, did not care 

To know the right or wrong. I saw 

That savage freedom had a spell, 

And loved it more than I can tell, 
And snapped my fingers at the law." 

This love of " savage freedom," and painting it as the 
ideal of human enjoyment, should be more careful to dis- 
criminate. Among Christians, and in the teach- 
Good men . ■,••■, • t i 
exposed to ings or the pulpit, there is danger, unless we 

have a wise care, that views will be held which 
cannot stand before conscience ; danger lest our hatred of 
artificial life, and the joy we take in unrestrained liberty, 
should drive us upon ground where Spinozism will be the 



PANTHEISM. 385 

only reason we can give for the faith which is in us. That 
is the shelter of respectability, under which everything 
immoral, or gross, or lawless and wicked, may gather. It 
is a shelter which may be stretched out over all 
that is fair and charming ; but it is equally hos- The doc- 
pitable to base and repulsive things. This want „anenc m a 
of discrimination, disregard of moral differences, JUS^f 
confusing the good with the bad, is a fatal weak- 
ness. Pantheism must be judged, not by the pure things 
for which it claims to make room, but by the impure things 
which fly to it for protection. 

Another source of power in pantheism, to whicli multi- 
tudes of men are especially susceptible, is the intellectual 
eminence, and in some instances the moral 

The argu- 

purity, of its masters. The argument is, that a ment from 

1 J ° . great men. 

doctrine held by such persons should be pre- 
sumed to be true. But let us see what becomes of this 
argument, when we examine and discriminate. The mas- 
ters of pantheism have never been first-rate, but at the 
best only second-rate thinkers. Descartes was the teacher 
of Spinoza ; discovered, by his transcendent genius, the 
data which Spinoza's logic carried out to their gloomy 
conclusion. So Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel are 

Pantheism 

overshadowed by Kant, who was not a pantne- cannot 

claim these. 

ist. Without him they could not «have been. 
He is the great primary in the system of transcendental 
thought ; and he remains such, while they wander into 
darkness. The power, therefore, is not in the pantheism, 
but in that spiritual philosophy which pantheism distorts 
and caricatures. The charm is in the Kantian metaphysics, 
in the transcendental philosophy. With this philosophy 
20 



386 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

the greatest names of the race have been associated, and 
will be. Of all subjects of investigation it is the most 
difficult, and hence appeals only to the highest order of 
minds. It is subtle, profound, inexhaustible. There can 
be no other such intellectual scymnastio as it 

Transcen- . "~ 

dentaiism affords ; for it taxes the attention, the reason, 

can. 

the imagination, the logical understanding, the 
power of expression, to their utmost, and ever more and 
more. Now those must be minds of more than the aver- 
age rank, which are first attracted to this philosophy ; nor 
can they escape the benefits of its discipline altogether, 
though not great enough to hold themselves back from the 
abysses of pantheism. It is their love of a-priori thought, 
of purely spiritual investigation, that proves, them great ; 
that some of them lose their balance, and drift into pan- 
theism, is a proof of weakness. Life is a probation, a con- 
stant scene of trial ; and that trial which affords the 
grandest discipline, offers at the same time the most fear- 
ful temptation. The exposures of the a-priori philosophy 

are very <n»eat ; and the fact that some of the 

They have J ° ' 

escaped the foremost thinkers of the race have slid from it 

perils of 

that phi- [ n i pantheism, but makes more conspicuous 
those who have stood firm on its slippery edge, 
— secured not so much by the grandeur of their intellect, 
as by their sublime faith in the Son of the Living God. 
The best philosophical fruit of the ages is ripened by that 
style of thought ; yet as soon as the thought begins to be 
pantheistic, that ripe fruit becomes over ripe, and to the 
discriminating taste loathsome. 

I cannot forbear to speak here of the growing disposi- 
tion, in some quarters, to let scientific studies take pre- 



PANTHEISM. 387 

ceclence of metaphysics, at our colleges and universities. 
It seems to me to be one of the most serious mistakes of 
educators at the present day. Though it may 
be true that the spiritual philosophy will give i C s in P edu- 
us here and there a Spinoza, a Hegel, a Goethe, 
a Carlyle or Emerson, yet what are these to the spawn 
of an empirical philosophy ? If the infidelities growing 
out of transcendentalism were even worse thnn those 
growing out of materialism, yet it has this signal advan- 
tage : it honors the soul ; it emphasizes the spiritual na- 
ture of man ; it trains our noblest mental faculties as 
material science never can. I would not pluck one honor 
from those who are extending our knowledge of nature ; 
we owe them a great debt, but their pursuits do not give 
the discipline which most ennobles human minds. The 
names of great naturalists are spoken reverently; but 
where is the volume contributed by them to the literature 
of the ages, and living from generation to gen- 
eration in the hearts of men ? Their discov- physical 

SC1GHC6 

eries become, after a little, the tools of the 
craftsman and economist. To their honor be it said that 
all works of present utility owe them a vast debt ; but 
where is the poem, the classic, the moral or religious vol- 
ume, conceived in their minds, which lives on through 
time, and ennobles and inspires? In vain do we look to 
the future for an order of men who shall write our hymns, 
who shall enrich our literature, who shall elevate and re- 
fine the tone of thinking among the people, if we turn the 
minds of our students down from the ideal realm, to labor 
on that whose fashion is all the time passing away. " It 
is as the best gymnastic of the mind," says Sir William 



388 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

Hamilton, " as a mean principally and almost 
Opinion of exclusively conducive to the highest education 

Hamilton. •> ° 

of our noblest powers, that we would vindicate 
to metaphysical studies the necessity whicji has too fre- 
quently been denied them. By no other intellectual appli- 
cation, and least of all by physical pursuits, is the soul thus 
reflected on itself, and its faculties concentrated in such 
independent, vigorous, unwonted, and continuous energy. 
By none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and 
intensely evolved. ' Where there is most life there is 
most victory.' " l If we look into the history of literature, 
we shall find that its most glorious eras have been illumi- 
nated by metaphysics ; that its proudest achiev- 
Scientific ments were the fair outgrowth and blossom of a 

eras barren ° 

ture tera spiritual philosophy. And on the other hand 
we shall find that its most barren periods, when 
the oracles were dumb and there was no open vision, 
when no monumental work was printed, when nothing 
was written which the world refuses to let die, have been 
times of the bondage of genius to empirical pursuits. The 
mind of the age ceased to have its conversation in heaven, 
and was led captive in the chains of the flesh. Thus it 
became weak, and groped in darkness ; nor did it any 
longer have to do with the deep intuitions of humanity, 
but built hay, wood, and stubble into the walls which are 
from everlasting to everlasting. 

But not one of the great benefits which result from the 

study of metaphysics is to be accredited to pan- 

. honors theism. These benefits have been secured in 

stolen. ... 

most transcendent measure where no pantheistic 

1 Philosophical Discussions, p. 39. 



PANTHEISM. 389 

element mingles. They begin to be tainted as soon as that 
element appears. It changes insight to mysticism, large- 
ness of view to vagueness, wealthy thought to corrupting 
dreams. It is only as the transcendentalist holds back 
from this extreme, not slipping down from the plane of 
high discipline into the state of mental lassitude, that he 
continues to be strong and to prevail. Nor is that purity 
of life, seen in such men as Spinoza and Emerson, any real 
support of their doctrine. It fascinates their 
disciples, and thus makes way for what they life m the 
teach, but it is no fruit of their teaching. A a test of his 

i-i i -,-r> i m i • i • doctrine. 

thinker may be pure in lite, while thinking out 
a system fearfully corrupting to others. He is too much 
absorbed in profound investigation to desire base indul- 
gence. With him study is the pleasure which satisfies 
every craving; he has no other passion to be gratified. 
" Keep men thinking," says a late writer, " and it matters 
not what their doctrines or their philosophy may be ; we 
know pretty well what their lives must be. A Spinoza 
gives as little trouble to the state as the Seraphic Doctor 
himself. ' All men absorbed in thinking have that which 
will keep them steady, as they pace the strange passage 
from birth to death." * It is only as the doctrines of these 
thinkers flow up from the fountains to the surface, and 
mix with social and every-day life, that we discover their 
true character. And here the weakness of pantheism is 
made overwhelmingly manifest; for the morals of commu- 
nities brought under its influence will not bear even the 
most superficial scrutiny. 

A system of thinking cannot be true, which thus fails to 

i " Thorndale." 



390 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

endure the test of. conscience. Our better na- 
crit e erion? al ture forces us to turn from it to that which 

helps pure-hearted men and women in actual 
life. Their right impulses, which it is never unsafe to 
heed, demand a doctrine from which they can draw com- 
fort in trouble ; which arms them against temptation ; 
which girds them for every good word and work. They 
are very unwise champions of Christianity, knowing but 
little of its blessed spirit, who cower in the presence of 
popular errors ; who try to stretch their charity so as to 
take in every great philosopher, whatever his religious 
views, fearing that if he be left out, the gospel may fall 

into disrepute. Christianity is no client. Much 

Christianity- 
above ail less does it need the patronage of those who 

patronage. > 

are slow to confess, its excellency. If any of 
the so-called great men of the world find it in their hearts 
to disown Christ, the loss is all their own. It is they, not 
the Rock cut out of the mountain, that must be ground to 
powder. 

We see, therefore, that the strength of pantheism turns 
to weakness when duly examined. It has no ground at 
all in strict reason. How, then, shall we accaunt for its 
ascendency over minds of no mean order? We can ex- 
plain this fact quite naturally. The system has 

How men . _ 

become been to such minds what Calypso s cave was to 

pantheists. 

the hero of the Odyssey. In their search home- 
ward for eternal truth, demanding of them tireless effort 
and caution, they have grown weary, and have allowed 
this charm to draw them out of their course. Worn out 
by the ceaseless strain, and no Star of Bethlehem rising 



PANTHEISM. 391 

on them, they have yielded to the enchantress. The soft 
fascination, half poetical and half philosophical, gradually 
overcame them. They were borne away on a delicious 
dream; grew averse to argument; vaguely believed their 
dream true — either because they wished it true, or 
through doubt of all other things. The system has lived, 
for the most part, in the minds of a few solitary thinkers. 
It has become popular only as it has enabled those hold- 
ing it to voice forth some great feeling of the times. 
Thus, when everything was ripe for a revolution in Eu- 
rope, the ruled rising up against their rulers in both church 
and state, pantheistic writers stepped forward, and led in 
the wide revolt. The practical import of their 
creed was, that every man should act out what ^JJfjJ {,"„. 
might be in him to his utmost, regarding as ^popuTa? 
sacred only the impulses of his own nature. 
Established forms were profane and unreal, over which 
the people might boldly ride, borne forward by the divine 
strength of their own desires. Thus did Goethe and 
others give the reins to malcontents, and apply the spur, 
raising a storm from which they were glad afterwards to 
hide their heads. It was not argument, but the discovery 
of something favorable to their revolutionary spirit, which 
brought the masses into love with pantheism. Here was 
a philosophy which legitimated disorder. They were will- 
ing to embrace, without careful study, a doctrine which 
encouraged them in overturning governments, guillotining 
monarchs, and sacking public treasuries. So 

,, . „ •, , t , , Legitimates 

more recently m England, and to some extent disorder. 

in America. If pantheistic teachings have 

spread among our people, it is because lawless desire had 



392 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

paved the way for theory. Enemies, not only of political 
wrongs, but of the Bible, the Sabbath, the church, the 
family, the state, wish some plausible premise from which 
to deduce their action. Champions of free love, and of a 
higher law found in their lower nature, know that the 
social chaos they invoke can never come, in a thoughtful 
community, save as they are able to show for it some 
ground of authority. Hence pantheism, more or less 
clearly defined, is their natural ally. From this their lax- 
ness of morals, and general irregularity of life, may be 
legitimately reached by a chain of practical logic. It is 
the fruitful root out of which all their disorder and cor- 
ruption can be made to grow. It gives them the license 
they crave, and at the same time invests their libertinism 
with the air and grandeur of philosophy. 

The pantheism which has poisoned so much of our pop- 
ular literature for a generation past, seems now to be in 
its decadence. Should its reign be hereafter restored, let 
us at least hope that it may not be ushered in through 
the gateway of man's lower passions. What we know of 
the English, and especially of the Puritan stock, persuades 
us that such is not the first danger. Our danger seems 
to me to arise rather from that worship of intellectual 
greatness which is so natural to our people. This was the 
source in which the stream of German pantheism began. 
The race of which we come is largely Teutonic. Its dis- 
persed members, like those of the fatherland, 

Our expo- 
sure to the are too much inclined to exalt sheer mental 

peril. 

power. The honor they yield it is sometimes a 
homage not due to the creature, but only to the Creator. 
That which we idolize, to which we burn incense, is not 



PANTHEISM. 393 

simple moral worth, but natural genius, refined by schol- 
arly culture. In this habit lies our special peril. It makes 
us too willing to be influenced by men of commanding 
intellect, without regard to the moral principles they 
teach, and it may be also practise. This habit shuts our 
eye to the higher and nobler part of man's nature. It 
prepares us to accept doctrines which may poison our 
character, simply because they are held, and urged upon 
our attention, by some imperial thinker. 

I would not discredit mental activity. Let it continue 
to distinguish the English-speaking races, and especially 
the people of America. In the future, more than in the 
past, let ours be the land of teachers, lecturers, authors, 
scholars. But let us not worship intellectual eminence. 
Let us insist on some other and diviner quality in the man 
whom we accept as truly great. Let us demand 
of every leader, and of every volume that asks £qc^ 6 
our favorable verdict, fidelity to conscience, 
moral purity in tendency as well as tone. Let us bid the 
new comer stand afar off, as an infected and deadly thing, 
if it only stimulates the thinking faculty, and does not lift 
the soul nearer to God. If it would escape this quar- 
antine, and sail into the harbor of our faith and love, let 
it bring, besides and above everything else, an influence 
which shall cleanse and exalt the natural affections; 
which shall guard the sanctuary of the heart ; which shall 
build broader and higher, instead of stealthily undermining, 
that wall of instinctive delicacy which keeps the honor 
and happiness of our firesides. 

Then there will be no stock on which pantheism may 
ingraft itself among us. Our ideal of the true man, and 



394 HALF TET7THS AND THE TEUTH. 

of the true woman, will continue to be grander than any- 
thing of which Spinoza dreamed. And so we shall not 
exchange, for this monster which devours up all things, 
the one only living and true God. We shall not exchange, 
for this hideous nightmare of the absolute being which is 
nothing, our sweet faith and instinctive trust in the Father 
of our spirits. The peace passing all understanding shall 
still be ours ; even the peace which comes of the assurance 
that he is with us, and that we are his children, whom no 
power can pluck from his hand. He draws about us the 
savor of his companionship, and undertakes with 
bet?e?than US ' 'while we are toiling downward after the lost 

Pantheism and yile< He coverg ug with the shie ltf of hig 

presence, and reenforces our strength with his 
own almighty power, when we march forth to fight against 
iniquity and outstanding wrongs. It is unto a personal 
God, who knows our frame, that we lift up our cry out of 
weakness and troubles ; and we are sure that he is atten- 
tive to our prayer. Whether living or dying, we are his. 
We go to our graves, even, trustfully and in blessed hope. 
For it is he who bids -us depart ; and we hear his whisper, 
in fatherly mercy, saying to us that after the natural cometh 
the spiritual, and that we shall be satisfied with beholding 
his face, when we awake in that nearer fellowship to which 
his love invites us. 



Of the subjects considered in this course of 

Conclusion. 

lectures, we now take our leave. I have en- 
deavored as a companion, and in some sense as a guide, to 
go with others through the depths and windings of pan- 
theistic thinking. If our incursion into that realm has 






PANTHEISM. 395 

reminded any of scenes described in the Sixth Book of 
the iEneid, I trust they have not lacked, throughout, a 
charm more potent than Virgil makes his hero carry. It 
is from the Tree of Life that we must pluck a branch, if 
we would walk unharmed in the shadow-land of scepticism. 
What the adored Beatrice was to Dante, in his Inferno, 
while he passed through circle after circle of the deepening 
abyss, the Spirit of Truth must be to us in the 
underworld of religious error. I am relieved ^/relleF 
even to gladness, coming up as I now do out of 
this investigation, into a realm where I may again breathe 
the upper air and see the sweet light of the Christian faith. 
It is as though one were awaking at length from a long 
and fearful dream. Notwithstanding the mighty intellects 
which pantheism may claim, and though I have tried to 
recognize the grandeur of the literary works of its disciples, 
I yet experience a refluent joy and peace in standing once 
more amid the radiance of Christian ideas, and hearkening 
to the voice of the Living God, my Father and Friend, 
speaking to me with the accents of a personal and tender 
love. This experience, coming after so much groping in 
the regions of darkness, recalls what Richter so graphically 
describes as happening to him one summer evening, while 
he lay on the hill- side and slept. 

He dreamed that he was in the parish church, and that 
he saw the dead leave their graves and gather about him. 
" The shadows stood congregated near the altar ; and in 
all the breast throbbed and trembled in place of a heart. 
One, which had just been buried in the church, lay still 
upon its pillow, and its breast heaved not, while RiC hter's 
upon its smiling countenance lay a happy Dream - 



396 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

dream ; but on the entrance of one of the living he 
awoke, and smiled no more. A lofty, noble form, hav- 
ing the expression of a never-ending sorrow, now sank 
down upon the altar, and all the dead exclaimed, ' Christ, 
is there no God ? ' And he answered, ' There is none ! I 
traversed the worlds. I ascended into the suns, and flew 
with the milky ways through the wildernesses of the heavens, 
but there is no God ! I descended as far as being throws 
its shadow, and gazed down into the abyss, and cried aloud, 
" Father, where art thou ? " but I heard nothing but the 
eternal storm which no one rules ; and when I looked up to 
the immeasurable void for the divine eye, it glared upon 
me from an empty, bottomless socket, and eternity lay 
brooding upon chaos.' Then there arose, and came into 
the temple, the dead children who had awakened in the 
churchyard ; and they cast themselves 'before the lofty 
form on the altar, and said, ' Jesus, have we no Father ? ' 
And he answered with streaming eyes, ' We are all 
orphans, I and you ; we are without a Father.' And 
as I fell down and gazed into the gleaming fabric of 
worlds, I beheld the raised rings of the giant serpent of 
eternity, and she enfolded the universe doubly. Then she 
wound herself in a thousand folds around nature, and 
crushed the worlds together; and all became narrow, dark, 
and fearful, and a bell-hammer, stretched out to infinity, 
was about to strike the last hour of time, and split the 
universe asunder, w T hen I awoke. My soul wept for joy 
that it could again w r orship God ; and the joy, and the 
tears, and the belief in him were the prayer. And when I 
arose, the sun gleamed deeply behind the full, purple ears 
of corn, and peacefully threw 7 the reflection of its evening 



PANTHEISM. 397 

blushes on the little moon, which was rising in the east 
without an aurora. And between the heaven and the 
earth a glad, fleeting world stretched out its short wings, 
and lived, like myself, in the presence of the Infinite 
Father ; and from all nature round me flowed sweet, peace- 
ful tones, as from evening bells." 

There are expressions in the writings of Richter which 
indicate that even he did not wholly escape the pantheistic 
virus. It may have been hatred of atheism, rather than 
of Spinozism, which moved him to utter these words. 
Yet are they applicable to the latter, in some respects, 
more than to the former. I am willing to take the passage 
as declarative of strong faith in a personal God ; for such 
it certainly is, at least in form. Whatever Richter's specu- 
lative belief may have been, therefore, we may adopt his 
Dream as illustrative of the workings of our Christian faith 
in view of pantheism. Thus viewing it, the 
chord of gladness within us, which vibrates J^ot 18111 
responsively to its closing words, is deeper than iJbe^Unu*. 
any pantheistic doctrine can ever reach. Nor 
has Goethe, the illustrious friend of Schiller, written any- 
thing so reverent and touching as the prayer which Schiller's 
father, an unlearned but pious man, offered up for his infant 
son: " O God, that knowest my poverty in good gifts for 
my son's inheritance, graciously permit that even as the 
want of bread, to thy Son's hunger-stricken 
flock in the wilderness, became the pledge of Th £ v™J er , 

' i o 01 Schiller's 

overflowing abundance, so likewise my darkness JawSany- 
may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the Goethe? 
measure of thy unfathomable light ; and because 
I, thy worm, cannot give to my son the least of blessings, 



398 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 

do thou give the greatest ; because in my hands there is 
not anything, do thou from thine pour out all things ; and 
that temple of a new-born spirit, which I cannot adorn 
even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou 
irradiate with the celestial adornments of thy presence, 
and finally with that peace which passeth all understand- 
ing." We search in vain, throughout the pantheistic 
literature of Germany, for anything so sublime as this faith 
in a personal God, or which so stirs the pure heart. What 
is there coming from the renowned Spinoza himself, or 
from his most famous disciple, which can awake the sweet- 
est and holiest emotions of our souls like the 
the twenty- twenty-third Psalm? As long as we believe # 

third Psalm. ,,.,,.. 

that what is noblest m us is most trustworthy, 
as long as the purest impulses of our nature are any guide 
to the truth, so long must we bow to the instinctive yearn- 
ing for a personal God, and say, in calm defiance of the 
wisdom which bewilders, "The Lord is my Shepherd ; 

I SHALL NOT WANT. He MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN 
GREEN PASTURES ; HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL 
WATERS. HE RESTORETH MY SOUL ; HE LEADETH ME 
IN THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HIS NAME'S 

sake. Yea, though I WALK through the valley 

OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL ; 
FOR THOU ART WITH ME ; THY ROD AND THY STAFF 



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